[Q] Tethering speeds drop when charging. Why? - Galaxy S III I9305 (4G LTE + 2GB RAM) Q&A, Help &

Hey folks, I can probably guess at why this happens, but I was hoping someone would have a definitive answer and a possible solution.
I work in remote parts of Australia where the only internet is Telstra 3G, so I use my phone as a modem to surf the net on my lap-top. Obviously when fully charged I don't need to have the phone plugged into the wall or USB port, so I get normal speeds. But as soon as I plug her in, the speeds drop immediately. I've done multiple speedtest.net tests so I know it's happening. It even happened when I had an iPhone4 (yeah, I know...) so it seems to be something to do with charging. Is it an elctromagnetic thing that affects the aerial reception? Is there a way to reduce this interference? Kinda sucks when you want to download and charge at the same time. Or play WoW and not get too much lag...
Thanks in advance.

Never tried Wi-Fi tether but with usb it never went slow for me
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

I would say that your charger is introducing a source of interference. About WoW though, you shouldn't really be peaking your bandwidth in games, it's more about latency there, so that shouldn't be affected by this unless you're dropping packets when charging (could be).

Related

Why tethering drains battery?

I have my Tilt set up to charge when on USB. However, when I tether and download a lot of data, the phone seems to be using its battery rather than the power provided through the cable. I am connecting through a powered USB hub so there should be enough current.
When the phone is fully charged the green led remains lit but when I disconnect the phone the battery level drops 20-60% within 20 minutes or so. Also, when I leave the computer tethering through a phone for about 12 hours, it will eventually reset because the battery reaches a critical level.
I tried using a Y-USB cable (with 2 USB plugs for extra power) but there was no difference. So, I hooked up the phone through AC adapter and tethered through bluetooth. Again, the problem remains.
This seem to appear when downloading or uploading data over longer periods of time on 3G. When using HSPA it's even worse and often the green led starts blinking (as if there was no power from USB even for a standby mode).
The effect is not as noticeable when doing light browsing, especially on Edge.
Has anyone else experienced a similar problem?
Well, you basically answered the question. It should charge, while connected, but HSDPA burns battery at a rate faster than it can charge.
BUT, something doesn't sound right with your set up. It shouldn't drain THAT fast, even on HSDPA, esp if it's idle. While idle on 3G, it'll still use some battery, but it shouldn't be enough to burn your battery out.
I can think one of 2 things is happening. Either:
(1) yours isn't really charging while connected and tethering. I use Internet Sharing to tether. I assume you are also. Ther is a way to tether not using Internet Connection Sharing where it does NOT charge. Maybe that's how yours is set up? Or
(2) your "idle" connection isn't really idle. Some process is still actively querying and using the net connection.
Bottomline: on Edge, mine will net charge, not net lose. On 3G, mine will net charge, but very slowly. On HSDPA, mine will consume battery, but at a rate much slower than if I was just browsing on my Kaiser directly.
jomo25 said:
something doesn't sound right with your set up. It shouldn't drain THAT fast, even on HSDPA, esp if it's idle. While idle on 3G, it'll still use some battery, but it shouldn't be enough to burn your battery out.
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Thank you for your comments. I am using "Internet Sharing" and you are right - my connection is not idle. I do FTP download or upload at the rate of 20kb/s over a few hours.
While I thought the battery drain is understandable with the USB setup (not enough power) I am surprised to see the same problem when using an AC adapter (tethering via bluetooth). The output in my AC charger gives 5V / 1 A.
Is there a way to provide more power to the phone so I don't end up with drained battery after a longer tethering session?
Well, the only thing I can think of is to throttle your connection to no more than UMTS speed. I.e. disable HSDPA, but not all 3G. Or of course throttle all the way back to Edge. But of course, this sacrifices your connection speed. Using only UMTS (normal 3G) is sufficient for most of my purposes.
You can diable HSDPA by "Settings | Connections | HSDPA" ANd uncheck it.
You can disable 3G altogether by switching your band to Edge only or using one of the modified Comm Mgr apps that have a 3G toggle.
I don't know of any way to "up the power" to the phone.
If you require such an intensive data connection wouldn't it be better to invest in a PCMCIA HSDPA card?
You are pushing the phone way beyond recommended limits and the heat alone will probably fry the Tx or battery or some other circuit.
Just a thought.
Have you thought about reducing the power consumption of the other elements of your phone?
Do you for example turn down the screen brightness to minimum, and turn of bluetooth? Those two alone (especially if bluetooth is discoverable) are massive power drains all by themselves.
Surur
So far, throttling the speed seems to be the only working solution. I suspect that a PCMCIA HSPA card would require a different data plan with AT&T.
As for turning off features - yes, I use an app that turns off the screen and recently I started turning off bluetooth as well (although it has never been set to be discoverable).
all I can say is wow that's some hardcore usage! though I am a bit surprised that it drains battery so fast, I guess its cause of the power technology used, the phone can't use the mains directly as it can only pull power from the battery which can only be charged so fast due yo its nature, but weird !
It might be that transferring data at the same time as charging prevents it from charging as efficiently since it's using the same port.
Greg220 said:
So far, throttling the speed seems to be the only working solution. I suspect that a PCMCIA HSPA card would require a different data plan with AT&T.
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Just an FYI - if you use that much data xfer, dont be surprised if AT&T force-switches you to a more "appropriate" plan. There have been documented cases where AT&T will audit data usage and if you are on a plan that is "unlimited" but only for data usage from the phone, they will change you over to the data plan that is essentially the equivalent of getting the data card. The user agreement of some of the PDA data plans does say there are actually limits to the "unlimited" data. Not sure if you are on AT&T or which plan you have, but thought I'd let you know in case.
jomo25 said:
Just an FYI - if you use that much data xfer, dont be surprised if AT&T force-switches you to a more "appropriate" plan
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That's a valid point and it's a calculated risk If this happens, I'll just cancel my data plan and go with some other solution. Fortunately, I'm not under a contract with AT&T.
jomo25 said:
Just an FYI - if you use that much data xfer, dont be surprised if AT&T force-switches you to a more "appropriate" plan. There have been documented cases where AT&T will audit data usage and if you are on a plan that is "unlimited" but only for data usage from the phone, they will change you over to the data plan that is essentially the equivalent of getting the data card. The user agreement of some of the PDA data plans does say there are actually limits to the "unlimited" data. Not sure if you are on AT&T or which plan you have, but thought I'd let you know in case.
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I've heard rumors of such "documented cases" but do you actually know anyone this has happened to? Has it eer happened to anyone on this board?
I find this happends on my phone too.
When it does i just try to make sure all other features are off, like bluetooth and wifi, and turning screen brightness off, and of course pressing the power button so that the screen off altogether.
You can get 2800mAh batteries from ebay for about a tenner which I think I'll get, that way if I am loosing charge it doesnt matter so much as I will still have loads left.
seb
Farsquidge said:
If you require such an intensive data connection wouldn't it be better to invest in a PCMCIA HSDPA card?
You are pushing the phone way beyond recommended limits and the heat alone will probably fry the Tx or battery or some other circuit.
Just a thought.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tether my phone 7 hours a day during the week and it doesn't get hot enough to hurt anything. Please don't spread misinformation like this as it's simply not true.
If it does the same thing with an AC charger and BT connection, I would suggest that maybe your phone is defective. Mine will charge while tethered and continues charging (up) on HSPDA or any other connection type even if I'm talking on my BT headset at the same time.
It's a pretty well known fact that charging via USB cable connected to a USB device is slower than charging via the wall charger. So why not follow the instructions to setup tethering via Wi-Fi as specified in this thread?
With this, you can tether as many computers as you want all at the same time and still be charging.
Hope this helps...
Same behavior observed here with both Hermes and Kaiser
5V 1A power supply and Kaiser doing tethered 3G data via BT will discharge the battery. I see battery discharge when docked to a 2A 5V supply and talking BT on 3G while DirectPush runs.
IMO, HTC caps the total power consumption and sacrifices battery charging when the total exceeds ~1A
Richard

USB tethering

What program are you using to achieve this?
Does this wear the battery down like wifi tether or if your phone is on usb the battery never drains faster than it can charge?
If the USB port you are connected to can supply the full 500mA, it will be enough power to run the tether and charge G1 (albeit very slowly). The battery will also warm up quite a bit (to about 50C). Sometimes the phone may get into a situation where it has not properly requested power from the USB controller and it will drain battery. Simply unplug and replug to fix that. It is also possible to charge faster than drain using Bluetooth tether.
The go to programs for root users would be Wireless Tether for Root and Wired Tether for Root. For stock users, check out PDAnet.
Thank you. It sounds like if I was going to set up a always on internet connection the BT is the way to go.
Here's what I'm thinking, when 7.2 becomes available from T-mo, make that my constant 24/7 connection for my desktop.
What's wrong with that plan?
jlacy76 said:
Thank you. It sounds like if I was going to set up a always on internet connection the BT is the way to go.
Here's what I'm thinking, when 7.2 becomes available from T-mo, make that my constant 24/7 connection for my desktop.
What's wrong with that plan?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's still a hidden cap for the bandwidth I believe. Also, if you do any activity that requires low latency, wireless (as in cell, not wifi) probably won't work well.
Since this is sorta on the topic.. anyone know how to get the usb tethering feature an cyans rom to work? i click it, it makes sound on my lap top.. but then what?
edit: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=580181&highlight=usb+tethering
cigar3tte said:
There's still a hidden cap for the bandwidth I believe. Also, if you do any activity that requires low latency, wireless (as in cell, not wifi) probably won't work well.
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My thinking was just another g1 and use my other g1 for telephone etc. This would just replace my dsl.
Wifi tether drains my battery faster than it can charge, so what are my options?
jlacy76 said:
Wifi tether drains my battery faster than it can charge, so what are my options?
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Click to collapse
Use a dual input USB cable, like those for portable hard drives (example here). Or go over bluetooth. Or go over USB in cyan's roms.
jlacy76 said:
Thank you. It sounds like if I was going to set up a always on internet connection the BT is the way to go.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You'd probably want to use the USB instead of BT, as using the BT radio will cause additional heat generation. BT 2.1+EDR also has a hard bandwidth cap of 3Mbps (your actual thoroughput may be even lower depending on the amount of WiFi interference in your area)
Here's what I'm thinking, when 7.2 becomes available from T-mo, make that my constant 24/7 connection for my desktop.
What's wrong with that plan?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As stated already, the first problem would be the 10GB bandwidth cap/throttle. Secondly, it's likely you'll be getting less than 7.2 at times other than at night if you are in an urban area. Finally, your rt ping will be pretty poor compared to a wired internet service. That can translate into a sluggish browsing experience.
I can say all of the above because I am actually using HSDPA as my home internet access now (not staying where I am long enough to justify a DSL installation and contract).
I saw that in the Cyan roms and that was one of the things that triggered this search.
Even if I had 1.5 down that would be fine. 7.2 would be better but we'll have to wait and see on the cap.
The real question for me is which method won't run the battery down faster than it can charge?

[Q] Wired Tether Connectivity

So I have a quick question about wired tether. For those of you that use it, does yours keep a steady download rate? Mine fluctuates anywhere from 15kb up to 1.0mb but doesnt stay at one speed consistently. I dont have cable so I watch alot of hulu videos but the fluctuation causes it to stop the video randomly. I have full bars of signal so I dont see why it cant keep a constant speed. Any advice would be appreciated.
Edit: Now im noticing that it completely drops the speed to zero and then back up. This is happening at the same time to the upload speed.
kbizzle said:
So I have a quick question about wired tether. For those of you that use it, does yours keep a steady download rate? Mine fluctuates anywhere from 15kb up to 1.0mb but doesnt stay at one speed consistently. I dont have cable so I watch alot of hulu videos but the fluctuation causes it to stop the video randomly. I have full bars of signal so I dont see why it cant keep a constant speed. Any advice would be appreciated.
Edit: Now im noticing that it completely drops the speed to zero and then back up. This is happening at the same time to the upload speed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does your PC have a wireless card? If so, get Wireless Tether, I use it and it works great for me. I haven't tried streaming any movies while using it, but I would imagine it would be good. You could also try PdaNet. I think the latter is slower, but I just use my regular internet when I'm at home. Hope this helps
Twolazyg said:
Does your PC have a wireless card? If so, get Wireless Tether, I use it and it works great for me. I haven't tried streaming any movies while using it, but I would imagine it would be good. You could also try PdaNet. I think the latter is slower, but I just use my regular internet when I'm at home. Hope this helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, I have found that wireless tether seems to run slower than the wired tether. I think it may be rom related cause it works better on some roms then others.
kbizzle said:
So I have a quick question about wired tether. For those of you that use it, does yours keep a steady download rate? Mine fluctuates anywhere from 15kb up to 1.0mb but doesnt stay at one speed consistently. I dont have cable so I watch alot of hulu videos but the fluctuation causes it to stop the video randomly. I have full bars of signal so I dont see why it cant keep a constant speed. Any advice would be appreciated.
Edit: Now im noticing that it completely drops the speed to zero and then back up. This is happening at the same time to the upload speed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use wired tether everyday, for both it's speed and the fact it doesnt turn my phone into a small battery powered heater like wifi tether does. I have noticed fluctuations in download rates, and it seems to occur more often with streaming than it does with a straight download. It is somewhat normal for a phone's signal to fluctuate some even if you have full signal bars. When I watch youtube or hulu I simply turn the quality down. It caches faster this way and thus is not as affected by the drops in speed.

Wifi Tethering / Mobile AP - how many connections?

Just wondering if anyone knows how many devices can be connected to the Galaxy S via wireless Mobile AP.
My home 3g router blew up and the replacement pocket wifi is pretty crap.
Currently I can get no more than 2 connections but read somewhere that as many as 5 could be. Maybe different software versions had different settings.
Any help is appreciated.
EDIT: SORTED. Had an older version of Docs rom 2.2.1 JPY running. Installed a newer JVQ 2.3.4 and was able to connect 5 devices. More than enough
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
I think I've gotten 3-4, but you need to realise the phone simply isn't designed to work as a dedicated router. The antenna is much smaller (so you'd need to be close by), and the ability to support multiple connections is very limited. Having more than a couple connections is going to cause all the connections to start lagging.
nwsk said:
I think I've gotten 3-4, but you need to realise the phone simply isn't designed to work as a dedicated router. The antenna is much smaller (so you'd need to be close by), and the ability to support multiple connections is very limited. Having more than a couple connections is going to cause all the connections to start lagging.
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Click to collapse
I agree its not meant to be used as a dedicated router, but it actually has many advantages.
I actually have 2 and selling 1 isn't going to get me much $ so I want to keep both. I also have no problems getting wifi reception from it as its located centrally in the house, plus the house is not that large. Speed is also excellent.
With the Virgin broadband home router I had for years, it was good but speed was not great (max 3mbps), it wasn't portable and generally lost connection a couple of times a day.
The replacement Virgin pocket wifi, had better speed but lost connection sometimes in under a minute. I had to reconnect it 7 times while trying to pay a bill over the internet even though I've set it to never disconnect. Once it stayed on for over a week but went downhill from there. I received another for free from my provider and same ****.
With the spare galaxy s, its faster than both - it got up to 6mbps and reception is poor at my house. Not once has it dropped network reception as its a phone, its always on power, and I have 3 spare batteries so if I want to take it away with me I can get days of usage without charge.
To me, nothing can beat that. Plus it also doubles as everything else (camera, navigator, tv-out, phone!!!!,etc).
It's a mobile hotspot with tons of advantages. Just got to figure out how to get a couple more connections.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium

[Q] "slow" Wireless AC speeds

I say slow because they are much slower that a Galaxy S4 and Note 3. At work today we were testing out a Belkin AC router to a cable modem. Using the Speedtest.net app the galaxy's were reliably hitting 200-210 Mbs download speeds. My new One was only able to muster 95Mbs down. I come home and connect to my ASUS N66 router and I'm able to hit 104Mbs reliably. What gives? This makes no sense to me. I verified I had a 433 Mbs link when on the AC router at work, same as the Samsungs, we were all in the same location I even tried standing where they were and holding the phone differently in-case I was blocking the antenna. I never expected to be able to get 104 down at home standing one room and 30 feet for the router. Is there something weird going on with the app maybe?
petersbc said:
I say slow because they are much slower that a Galaxy S4 and Note 3. At work today we were testing out a Belkin AC router to a cable modem. Using the Speedtest.net app the galaxy's were reliably hitting 200-210 Mbs download speeds. My new One was only able to muster 95Mbs down. I come home and connect to my ASUS N66 router and I'm able to hit 104Mbs reliably. What gives? This makes no sense to me. I verified I had a 433 Mbs link when on the AC router at work, same as the Samsungs, we were all in the same location I even tried standing where they were and holding the phone differently in-case I was blocking the antenna. I never expected to be able to get 104 down at home standing one room and 30 feet for the router. Is there something weird going on with the app maybe?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In WiFi advanced settings, disable WiFi optimization - other uses stated it helped them to increase the speeds.
Settings>WiFi>Advanced
davebugyi said:
In WiFi advanced settings, disable WiFi optimization - other uses stated it helped them to increase the speeds.
Settings>WiFi>Advanced
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks I read that and tried it to no avail. Speeds were better yesterday at 150Mbs and inline with a coworkers brand new ONE running 4.3. I believe it is just a matter of how HTC deals with packet size (windowing) and not truly indicative of throughput capability. The test runs for a limited time and the throughput increased throughout the entire test. If it ran longer it would climb higher but just how high is the question.
It's a matter of curiosity more than anything as I never need those speeds nor are the repeatable anywhere but in that test"lab" In reality I only have a 100M connection at home and with power boost see speeds of 150 max. I get 100+ reliably (5Ghz N network) to the phone from my main living space and that's nothing to complain about.
I will have to say the range on the ONE is outstanding. My desk is 100 feet from the AP and I was able to obtain 125Mbs reliably from my desk. I didn't have the chance to compare it to the S4 at that distance but I can't complain about that speed.

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