Dear all,
With a small 900mAh battery, What is the real world usage time? I mean making up to 2 hours of calls per day does it last at least 12hours before the need to recharge battery and this is assuming that 3G is on all the time. Thanks.
French network technical support say 60 hours with GPS on !!!!
I think it's joke.
Well, I've been watching the battery life on mine for a couple of days now in a reasonably scientific way and here are the early rather speculative results:
With just GPRS and nothing else on and very light use the battery drops from 100% to 80% very fast - less than an hour of light use.
Leaving it running on these settings will run it down to about 20% by the end of the working day - the drain seems to ease off aftert he first sharp drop
Powering up wifi and music for short time doesn't seem to make much difference.
Turning 3G on also doesn't seem to make the difference you would expect either.
So basically I would feel the need to take a charger with me if I left the house for the day, which will probably mean that I have to send the thing back. I've seen the coolsmartphone video review and mine isn't performing anything like that one - I would say I am loosing charge at about twice the rate.
Now the only issues that could be at work here is that I live in a lousy reception area. But could this really make such a difference?
What I would find really useful is a list of other tweaks you can make to cut power use so I can try them out. But at the end of the day it's looking like too many compromises would be needed to make this thing practical for me.
Reception would make a reasonable difference if normal network messages are being sent/received (general scans of BCCH channels, authentication with the network) - i.e. the radio isnt being used for data/voice, and only to keep registered to the network. But during those times the rest of the phone would also be in low power mode, so i would say an absolute max of 5 to 10%.
It would make a significant difference if you are transmiting data/making calls in a low reception area. I would say easily upto 20%.
It sounds to me like if you plan to use the phone much at all during the day you need a second battery. Then that turns into the hassle of how to charge the second battery every night, and i bet the desktop stand can't charge a second battery
My conclusions exactly. Impractical to say the least.
The puzzle then is why my last phone, a Nokia E51 with a 1050 mAh battery, under the same conditions, managed to last 2-3 days?
Is WM6 really that much of a power grabber compared to S60?
moonlanding said:
My conclusions exactly. Impractical to say the least.
The puzzle then is why my last phone, a Nokia E51 with a 1050 mAh battery, under the same conditions, managed to last 2-3 days?
Is WM6 really that much of a power grabber compared to S60?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Short answer - yes.
There's all these power saving features in new app processors like being able to leave the screen on while powering down the main CPU. You can use an interupt from the radio to wake up the processor etc.
Windows doesnt support half of these features, thats why find windows phones save all their power by turning the screen off. Other phones with screens just as big are alot less regimental about turning the screen off at any opertunity.
I was involved in a project once to design a smartphone and it was a really surprising how much difference there was between the windows version they suplied and an ARM version of linux.
I have HTC Touch Crouse and i have problems with battery (GPRS always on and Bluetooth) ... now with Diamond i have VERY BIG Problem. Battery Keeps less than one day ...
The experiment continues.
Disabling "GPRS auto attach" in Advanced Configuration Tool has made a big difference - still 90% after 6 hours now.
Now this is a surprise to me because I thought that you did this when you set the network seek to GSM only and not hunt for 3G. Or maybe I'm getting my GPRSs and GSMs mixed up...
Next step - leave this setting in place and turn push back on. Watch this space.
GSM digitises your voice and slots it into a time divided channel on a frequency, and marks it as voice. On the network side, it converts this back to voice and sends it on the PSTN network (for a landline call).
GPRS takes data you want to send and inserts it directly in the same time divided channel and marks it as data. On the network side the network transfers this onto the internet (or other network) through the GGSN (its essentially a router).
So GSM and GPRS use the same technology. Setting the phone to GSM only, just stops it connecting to 3g networks.
Anyway, when you turn your phone on, the tower tells it its capabilities eg GPRS. This give you a GPRS available icon. When you actually want to send data, you need to 'attach'. This is like logging into the network.
To do that you need to open a data channel and send your login details.
Normal phones will do that i.e. attach, and then go idle. The network will only log them off if they move to a new cell and do not reauthenticate.
Anyway, if you are not attached:
- When you send data, the phone will need to attach first (milliseconds delay) - unoticable.
- You will NOT have an IP address so incoming data can not reach you.
If you use pop3 with regular pull of email, it'll make less difference the more frequently you pull your email - because every time you do, the phone will attach.
If you use PUSH email, it'll make no difference because you have to remain attached (have an ip address) for push to work.
I'm sure most people didn't care to know all that but i'm sure some did!
Wow. Thanks. Impressive.
Let me try to summarise. With auto attach off the phone isn't trying to attach to the 3G network all the time which saves power. But it is also disconnected from GPRS and data networks. However this won't affect push email because it will attach when it needs to, ie when the network tells it that there is mail or I send something out. Is this right?
What about internet? Will the phone automatically attach to the data netowrks when I fire up Opera? Presumably to attach to 3G I will need to reset to automatically seek WCDMA.
moonlanding said:
Wow. Thanks. Impressive.
Let me try to summarise. With auto attach off the phone isn't trying to attach to the 3G network all the time which saves power. But it is also disconnected from GPRS and data networks. However this won't affect push email because it will attach when it needs to, ie when the network tells it that there is mail or I send something out. Is this right?
What about internet? Will the phone automatically attach to the data netowrks when I fire up Opera? Presumably to attach to 3G I will need to reset to automatically seek WCDMA.
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Click to collapse
You're still a bit confused i think. Ok on a phone you have voice or data. Data covers mail, internet, weather updates etc etc, voice covers phone calls.
There are two distinct protocols here, and we need to talk about them diferently...
GSM:
With GSM calls are sent over 1 timeslot and singalled as voice.
To make a call you need to have a signal, that takes a very short few messages which are sent every 20 minutes or so, or if you move around between towers. The Radio in the phone can do this all by itself without waking the phone up.
If you want to send ANY data (emails, internet, anything) you need to use GPRS. GPRS uses the same channels but inserts data into them instead of voice. Before you can send or receive any data you need to 'login' to the network. To login you need to actually open the channel and make a connection. Logging in is called 'ataching'. When you attach you get an IP address and the network can send stuff to you and u can send stuff to the network. Attaching needs to wake up the phone.
Once attached the phone can go into a sleep mode saving power, but any data send or received will wake up the phone.
UMTS/3G
UMTS is different in that everything is sent code divided. There is no 'login' or attach as such. In this mode all your voice gets converted to data and sent across.
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With auto attach on:
If you use 3G mode, every time you switch between a 3G and GPRS area the phone will atach (GPRS) again, this will drain power.
Every time you move out of GPRS and come back into GPRS the phone will attach, even if you have nothing to send.
With autoattach off:
The phone will only attach if it has something to send AND is on GPRS (no 3G available or 3g turned off)
The upside is that you save power when you move between cells. The downside is that you can't receive any data from the network untill you decide to attach.
For push email for example you would never end up detaching as it would hold the connection open.
Anyway i hope that clear, but i'm quite sleepy so it might not make any sense lol
That makes sense to me. When I get my Touch Diamond, I'm definitely turning 'GPRS auto attach' off, because I don't think I need it on.
someone1234 that`s really useful info.I guess autoattach off is the best option for me too. WHEN the phone arrives.
Thanks again senior1234. I'm getting there. But this is more complex that I thought so I've gone back and checked what really makes a difference to the battery life.
The big difference for me is having the phone band set to GSM only (phone, options). Disabling auto attach makes a difference but not as much as I thought. I had changed both of them at the same time, thinking that they were more or less the same thing. Sorry folks. Very unscientific.
But if you feel like trying these bear in mind that I don't move between cells very much and have awful reception. I'll leave it to others to explain whether this is important.
HTC told me that with the screen on full brightness and phone turned on the GPS would only last about 2 hours befre the battery died, looks like we'll need the extended battery or several normal ones!
moonlanding said:
Thanks again senior1234. I'm getting there. But this is more complex that I thought so I've gone back and checked what really makes a difference to the battery life.
The big difference for me is having the phone band set to GSM only (phone, options). Disabling auto attach makes a difference but not as much as I thought. I had changed both of them at the same time, thinking that they were more or less the same thing. Sorry folks. Very unscientific.
But if you feel like trying these bear in mind that I don't move between cells very much and have awful reception. I'll leave it to others to explain whether this is important.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GSM will use alot less power, so that is whats definatly making the difference
Why? Well.. GSM uses time division, which means the phones in an area take turns 'speaks'/'listening' with the tower. This ensures that no two phones are talking at the same time, and the tower can 'hear' what was sent. Because of this the power the phone transmits with can be controlled to be just high enough for the tower to listen, but not too high as to waste battery.
The down side of this scheme is that even if a phone has nothing to 'say', the other phones will wait in case it does. This means you're wasting bandwidth - or time that could be used by another phone to send data. Bottom line, data throughput is slower!
With 3G, all phones can talk at the same time. The data they send is tagged with a code, so that the data doesnt get mixed up. The advantage here is no time is wasted waiting for phones that may have nothing to send. The down side is that you need to be 'talking' loud enough to 'talk' over other people sending. This is why the data rate over 3G drops off really rapidly as you move away from the tower.
The disadvantages are a phone far from the tower using 3G will use more power than one using GSM because its having to 'talk' louder to get over other phones 'talking'.
Also, signals that get lost because they were drowned out by other phones have to be retransmited, which doesnt happen with GSM as much.
Yeah 3G or CDMA based channel access methods are a real power hog!
As for Auto attach you would expect it to only make a real difference if you have programs holding channels open.
With regards to low reception, it will make a significant difference because power disipation is not linear. Like all radiation it follows the inverse square law. For every meter distance the power drops of by a square of the distance.
Don't forget, when comparing uptime with other phones, with the diamond you have 4x the amount of pixels. VGA (640 x 480) devices will always chew up more Battery that QVGA (320 x 240) . This is one of the main reasons that HTC and the others delayed shipping VGA devices until now.
If you want longer battery life, you are going to have to stop using the display so often.
There is no way a vga machine can compete with a qvga machine on battery life... when all other factors are equal.
I think if you discount 3G, the battery is a little too small for the phone. With 3G its wholy inadequate.
The screen does make a huge difference, but these screens are more efficient, and HTC have used every opertunity to turn the screen off - a bit excessivly if you look at how fast it turns off when you make a call.
I don't understand why they don't use the iphone method of turning it off when the light sensor shows its dark (in a call).. i.e. the earpiece is next to your head!
moonlanding said:
The experiment continues.
Disabling "GPRS auto attach" in Advanced Configuration Tool has made a big difference - still 90% after 6 hours now.
Now this is a surprise to me because I thought that you did this when you set the network seek to GSM only and not hunt for 3G. Or maybe I'm getting my GPRSs and GSMs mixed up...
Next step - leave this setting in place and turn push back on. Watch this space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've disabled gprs auto attach and set my band to GSM. When i connect to net with opera will it still turn on 3G etc?
nokmond said:
I've disabled gprs auto attach and set my band to GSM. When i connect to net with opera will it still turn on 3G etc?
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Click to collapse
good question.
i only use my phone for normal phone stuff ans sometimes for some internet browsing.
should i turn anything on or off?
hi,
i was wondering if there is an app which will automatically switch from 3G to 2G when i turn of the display. When the phone is in my pocket there is no need for the 3G eating my battery.
that would be an amzing app BUMP BUM BUMP
It indeed would be. I'm on it.
EDIT: Then again, switching from 3G to EDGE and vice-versa is resource/battery heavy in heavy and will probably leave you without network for a while. I'm actually going to say it's not worth it. If I create it, I'll post an initial version up here for you guys to decide (no 3G frequencies for me).
Edit: it seems as though there's nothing in the api about switching network state. Looks like a root app (if it's even possible) would be required..
Edit2: This is probably impractical. For example, if you answered a call, you would be disconnected from the call immediately. Besides, the G1 is rated as having more sleep battery life under 3G than GSM.
How does being on 3g even waste battery when your on idle? what Syncing with gmail? i would think the constant switching would waste more battery
I guess you could do it with Tasker. I got that app in ADC2 and it's amazing what you can do with it.
I guess it would be very impractical if you would get disconnected everytime you answer a call from a sleep state. I havent compared the battery consumtion between 3G and "g yet, but i imagine you could save quite some. m not only talking about the Synching, but mainly Chat clients which run in the background. There is no need for them to run over 3G.
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Do any other Streak 7 owners have this problem also?
To reproduce the problem:
Run from an area with good signal coverage (home/office)
into Subway (NYC Subway) where you find no signal.
Inside the subway, when you turn on the screen (as many people will do to kill time), the data connection will of course, finds no signal.
Then when you come out of subway again, in an open area where signals are all good, Streak 7 cannot establish a proper data connection while showing perfect full bar signal strength..
Only restart can restore the data connection. Turning on/off airplane mode wont help....
Is it just my configuration or a bug in streak 7?
I go from the street level to the red line subway in chicago but i lose 3g and hop onto 2g. I lose signal a few times until i get back in the elevated tracks and gain 3g. Not sure if it helps you but i don't have a problem with data connection in that situation. Granted, data is mostly worthless when the train is moving between stations.
Thanks so much!
I am continuing monitoring what combination will create problem.
Believe or not I have observed 3 times such issues witin the past 7 days... Hopefully they were only due to some apps, not the system defects.
sighs...
Right at the moment when I decided to keep and love this streak 7, this bug came to life again...
Today I used the streak 7 in NYC subway, and the signal bar, of course, displayed "4 grey bars with a red cross" which means no signal.
And when I get back home, it STILL DISPLAY THE SAME THING. that is after coming out of subway for 10 mins +.
Then I switched on airplane mode and switch off again, the signal bar display is
full signal, but without the 3G/4G sign , and I tried apps, all reporting no data connection.
Only solution is to restart it.
Can I figure it somewhere in kernel or software apps?
If not, I may really need to return it with 15 days of purchase =(
Similar situation happened today. My Streak showed 4g signal with full bars, tried to open a app it told me i had no internet connection. Once i closed the app the 4g signal flashed then everything was up and running.
Just wanted to let you guys know that I have had a similar issue with my Droid Incredible. If it fails to get a data signal while attempting a background sync, it will actually restart. My solution has been to put the DInc in airplane mode before I enter the subway, and then remove airplane mode when I leave. Not real a big issue, since it takes about 2 seconds to go into airplane mode (& out of it).
Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk
WookieFan said:
Just wanted to let you guys know that I have had a similar issue with my Droid Incredible. If it fails to get a data signal while attempting a background sync, it will actually restart. My solution has been to put the DInc in airplane mode before I enter the subway, and then remove airplane mode when I leave. Not real a big issue, since it takes about 2 seconds to go into airplane mode (& out of it).
Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk
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Thanks!
This problem barely happens to me now.
I just want to make sure it is not a hardware problem. As long as there is a "soft" solution to it, I am fine. =)
I have low cellular signal in my house so i want to disable the phone's radio when on house wifi, but that option is "unavailable" in tasker.
Is there a work around to this? i know you can turn on airplane mode then turn back on wifi, but i want to know if there is a solution to just disable the radio.
Would this help? http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1217038
Thanks.
bump 10char
I thought there was a plugin released recently that allowed something like this, sorry I can't find it though.
I have bad signal at home too so I just change over to 2g and battery does pretty well.
Why would you want to turn the radio off though? You won't receive calls/sms/anything.
Going to 2G and turning data off should be better surely?
signal is so weak that you can assume no signal at all in the house, so i'm not sure if just changing to 2g data is good enough since the phone will still continue to search for cellular signal which drains the battery.
i will try that at least for now and see if it helps, but ultimately, i do want to turn off the radio and leave on wifi.
i am able to receive calls via wifi through use of voip, receive sms via google voice.
I have observed this but don't know why this happens. Sometime, my data download speeds lag to really low speeds of 50 KB. When I turn the airplane mode on and off, the data speeds increase drastically to around 2.6 MBps. Does anyone know why the data speds change so much after the airplane mode and why it lags in the first place?
I am on LQ2, stock ICS, LPT modem, AT&T (US).
Sent from my GT-N7000 using XDA
Have you tried flashing a different modem?
I think what you are experiencing is either traffic shaping by your carrier or the tower you are connecting to for data is overly busy. By cycling your radio with the airplane mode you are actually re-registering your handset on the carrier net and this may also cause you to connect to another tower that has less traffic on the backhaul link.
Some of our local networks are sometimes saturated and one can't get a connection to make a call. So what some people do is dial the emergency 112 and then drop the call, this prioritizes the handset on the tower and one can them make a call.
If you can't find a proper work around for this problem, please download the app "restart connection" from the play store. this app disconnects and then re registers your phone within 3 seconds so you don't have to manually enable and then disable airplane mode all the time which can be frustrating.
you might also wanna install "network monitor mini ", this app gives you a live reading of your data transfer on your screen in a pretty non intrusive way, so you can always know the speed of your data transfer.
I have the network monitor mini live widget at the right bottom Corner of the screen and I check it occasionally to see my connection status and whenever I am on a congested tower or if iam getting low speeds, I click on restart connection icon on my dock, and my phone gets re registered on the network and I get better speeds.this set up has helped me numerous times.
Both of us basically do the same thing, its just that my set up is a little bit easier and less annoying. I Hope you find it helpful
Good luck