Database Users

HSDPA Power Consumption Measurements

Hi,I've made some power consumption measurements while using an HSDPA data connection to browse the web. The current draw seems enormous!
HSDPA Browsing = 500mA
GPRS Browsing = 300mA
GPRS Voice = 150 mA
UMTS Voice = 300 mA
The measurements were made using the free version of acbTaskMan (www.acbpocketsoft.com). I'm wondering if someone can confirm these results using their TyTn. All the measurements were made with full signal strength, the back light on its minimum setting and only a web browser running. I'm interested in performing a comparison with different manufacturers devices so I'd like to confirm my results.
Best Regards.

Evening fellow tyke
Just got onto HSDPA with tmobile and noticed my battery was draining ALOT quicker since the switchover. Still figuring out what it is thats causing the problems but ive switched it to UMTS only since here in the capital of the UKs biggest county we get decent 3G.

mrvanx said:
Evening fellow tyke
Just got onto HSDPA with tmobile and noticed my battery was draining ALOT quicker since the switchover. Still figuring out what it is thats causing the problems but ive switched it to UMTS only since here in the capital of the UKs biggest county we get decent 3G.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Appen that HSDPA’s a bad ‘un fer tha, aye that be reight by gum, tha knows tha gets owt for nowt. Mehbe the'll sam 'em up and mek 'em reight fast.
tyke descendant
Mike

Has anyone ever compared the power drain of HSDPA to 802.11b/g? I'm curious which one drains the battery faster and by how much.

Oh dear, did I forget to mention I'm originally from Lancashire
I'd be interested if someone could confirm these result using a different network as well as t-mobile.
Si.

Battery life improvement for USA users

Hello all
As the title suggests, fhis setting will improve battery life, but is usefull for USA users only. I decided to put this in a new thread to make it easier to find, I have been going nuts over battery life. As you can tell from my name, I am an athena owner who just got my HD2 about a week ago - but got better battery life out of that huge phone than I do with the HD2. I started reading post after post re battery problems, some got good life, others bad. One who reported good life had it in airplane mode and I realized that the data bands on the phone are useless stateside - we can only use EDGE over GSM. So I made the following setting changes...
Go to comm manager
Tap on phone (NOT ON/OFF SWITCH)
Go to Band at bottom
Change top from Auto to GSM
Change bottom from Auto to (1900/850) (CONFIRM YOUR CARRIER FRQUENCIES!!!)
This stops the phone from endlessly searching for HSPDA/3G on 2100/900 frequency - this eats battery like crazy. Without making any other mod, my battery now gives me an honest days work. Ex. I took the phone off charger at 7:00 am at 100%, its now 10:30 pm and I have 25% remaing a full days use, I even posted this from my device.
For those with USA ATT or T-Mo, let me know how it works for you. My phone is straight out of the box, no mods or reg tweaks and this single change almost doubled batt life.
Enjoy!

Omg if this works i'll kiss you. I never bothered to click on that band setting, so I didn't even know those options were in there. The only thing I thought I could disable was in Advanced Network settings.

Good thinking that man!

it give you better battery life but well cost you on webb browsing slow gprs no 3g speed i hope it helps

We are in the US so we can't use 3G on our HD2's. Edge is actually pretty fast on this device, a lot faster than my iPhone 3GS is on edge.

Admittedly my day has only been a Saturday, but the battery (at 7.20pm) is still showing 70% and I only changed the 'Auto' at the top to GSM...didn't do the rest! Cool!

Full day at work...35% battery left! Looking good!

Thanks!
This worked great I did not even have to switch to my Xperia X1 today. I think I will try this on my sony to see if I can push it to a two day of battery.

9.10pm and it's still at 29%.

Thanks!
I don't know about battery life yet but in the case of bad reception it actually downloads data much better.
When trying to download data it used to constantly fail, but now it works immediately. Apparently otherwise it tries to download in 3g and fails. When there is good reception it knows what to choose but not in the case of bad reception.

I still can't get over that the US doesn't have proper 3G coverage though... I'm in Aus and our 3G coverage is quite good. Don't have to worry about it switching to GSM

I know this thread is centered around battery life but does anyone here have the HD2 and using it on at&t? If so, do you have the ability to enter at&t settings to get MMS messages in the new HTC messaging app in the HD2?

walshieau said:
I still can't get over that the US doesn't have proper 3G coverage though... I'm in Aus and our 3G coverage is quite good. Don't have to worry about it switching to GSM
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
US is a bigger country

walshieau said:
I still can't get over that the US doesn't have proper 3G coverage though... I'm in Aus and our 3G coverage is quite good. Don't have to worry about it switching to GSM
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Isn't the problem that the US use different frequencies in their 3G network than most other countries, and the HD2 that retails now does not support it?
It used to be so with the Diamond/touch pro if I recall correctly.

no stable 3g connection

any1 els having this problem where it constantly switches from 3g and edge my g1 has a stable 3g but the nexus jus keeps losing it

Once mine locked on to 3G it has stayed on 3G. T-Mobile just launched 3G in my town before Christmas, not that it matters.
However, it is not as fast as AT&T 3G here.

I too have problem with 3G here the signal strength seems too low like 2 bars but on Nokia n900 i get like 4 bars even n1 seems switching back n forth between edge and 3g. while n900 stays 3G all the time at same place..
I will try this device for week and see if the problem is everywhere or something with tmobile network or else i have it send back.

theres a huge thread going on now on google about this issue. Hopefully they address this soon. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=0bd8ccd4799040c2&hl=en

This happened all the time on my G1.
Perhaps it is Tmo.

As a comparison, what are peoples experiences in the UK with 3G?
This might help determine if it is a phone or network issue.

I'm having the same problem. I have a T-Mobile Touch Pro2 and a nexus one. the Touch pro2 holds on two bars of 3G while the N1 switches to EDGE. Sometimes it starts to hesitate between EDGE and 3G causing apps to say "connection problems". It seems that in order to feature a long battery life, it favors EDGE over 3G and the threshold for 3G is too high.
Where there's strong 3G footprint, the N1 shows full bar, but somehow it doesn't seem as fast as it should be (7.2 Mbps) although the fast processor and rendering compensates for that.
Hope they fix that soon. It's most likely a software problem. I recall the iPhone 3G suffered from a very similar issue when it was first released.

Im having this issue.
at 1st i thought it was only me, until i saw the post on Gizmodo. and looking at this link " http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=0bd8ccd4799040c2&hl=en&fid=0bd8ccd4799040c200047c99c44ddfe6"
it looks like alot of ppl are experiencing this issue. Im at work and ive always had full 3g bars with my MT3G, and my Nexus One keeps going in and out of it.. for the most part it stays on EDGE.. GRRRRR hope it gets fixed with a firmware update.

Anyone in UK with this issue?

I to am experiencing this issue in Florida
When I do tests from speedtest app I can get decent downloads anywhere from 500-900kbps, but upload somtimes is pitiful..often less than 100kbps.
I have also noticed that when I check my phone status and look at the network connection, it fluctuates between UTMS and HSDPA.
I have found that when I plug my N1 into the wall charger it seems to hold onto 3G much better along with better speeds. Not a solution, but maybe a clue to understanding cause?

saint327 said:
I have found that when I plug my N1 into the wall charger it seems to hold onto 3G much better along with better speeds. Not a solution, but maybe a clue to understanding cause?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tested plugging it in in various parts of your house or where ever you are plugging it into to see if it helps the reception situation?
I really hope they get this figured out soon. I am holding off on hitting that Place order button until it's all ironed out. It's definitely a test of my will power. I was going to order it last night until I started seeing this issue crop up all over the place...

elkavayo said:
I'm having the same problem. I have a T-Mobile Touch Pro2 and a nexus one. the Touch pro2 holds on two bars of 3G while the N1 switches to EDGE. Sometimes it starts to hesitate between EDGE and 3G causing apps to say "connection problems". It seems that in order to feature a long battery life, it favors EDGE over 3G and the threshold for 3G is too high.
Where there's strong 3G footprint, the N1 shows full bar, but somehow it doesn't seem as fast as it should be (7.2 Mbps) although the fast processor and rendering compensates for that.
Hope they fix that soon. It's most likely a software problem. I recall the iPhone 3G suffered from a very similar issue when it was first released.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I find that the threshold for 3g is better balanced than on my htc magic. On the magic it was all too often to have one bar of 3g and not be able to download anything, timing out with connection errors. Nexus one works much better at low bars but also switches to edge/gprs when it's needed. I am on voda in uk from a house with fairly spotty 3g. So, for me I get a more consistent connection than with my magic.

vas41 said:
I find that the threashhold for 3g is better balanced than on my htc magic. On the magic it was all too often to have one bar of 3g and not be able to download anything, timing out with connection errors. Nexus one works much better at low bars but also switches to edge/gprs when it's needed. I am on voda in uk from a house with fairly spotty 3g. So, for me I get a more consistent connection than with my magic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perhaps this is true, but I have also been reading about people with G1s (and one guy with a TP2) that consistently get better reception with their old phones over that of the nexus. This is the part that disturbs me the most.
Maybe it's a power management issue which may be highlighted by the fact that plugging it in seemed to help?

rossiscatch said:
Have you tested plugging it in in various parts of your house or where ever you are plugging it into to see if it helps the reception situation?
I really hope they get this figured out soon. I am holding off on hitting that Place order button until it's all ironed out. It's definitely a test of my will power. I was going to order it last night until I started seeing this issue crop up all over the place...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I've tried it both unplugged and plugged in in the same location. Haven't tried other power outlets/locations in home. I fall into the category of those who had a G1 and got solid 3G at the same location.

Anyone tried it plugged into a wall socket with one eye closed standing on a chair with the phone up your arse? Works like a dream.

vas41 said:
I find that the threshold for 3g is better balanced than on my htc magic. On the magic it was all too often to have one bar of 3g and not be able to download anything, timing out with connection errors. Nexus one works much better at low bars but also switches to edge/gprs when it's needed. I am on voda in uk from a house with fairly spotty 3g. So, for me I get a more consistent connection than with my magic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Based on my experience, I'd have to disagree with you with respect to the Nexus, although you compare it to a phone that I do not have. More often than not, when Nexus has 1 or even 2 bard of 3G the link is totally unreliable and in most cases the application ends up showing a message box that says "no connection available: retry" (not exact wording), unless it switches to EDGE, there's no guarantee data will be exchanged with the cloud. On the very same spot, at the very same time, Touch Pro2 is able to maintain at least 2 bars of 3G and download speeds of 600 Kbps, while the Nexus is forced to 130 Kbs.
I drove today 25 miles (office to home) checking the nexus behavior, and only in very rare instances was able to keep full bars of 3G, in places where I know the 3G is strong.
I have also not seen the Nexus connecting through HSPA, only EDGE or UMTS, but I don't blame Nexus for that. It could be that this area has not been upgraded, in spite of T-Mo announcement that 100% of its network was HSPA.

rossiscatch said:
Perhaps this is true, but I have also been reading about people with G1s (and one guy with a TP2) that consistently get better reception with their old phones over that of the nexus. This is the part that disturbs me the most.
Maybe it's a power management issue which may be highlighted by the fact that plugging it in seemed to help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I might be the guys with teh TP2 ;-) and I can confirm that.
Honestly, it's frustratig for all of us that jumped into the Nexus bandwagon after all the hype and big expectations, but I'm not too concerned about it. The iPhone 3GS went through almost the same situation verbatim when it was launched. I'm pretty sure this is a software issue and can be upgraded with an OTA patch. I'd say that it's in the best interest of all the parties involved (Google, HTC, T-Mo) to resolve the issue quickly and avoid the media backslash.
Now I may be wrong, and it could be a hardware issue, and then I guess Google will be seeing a lot of returns.

elkavayo said:
Based on my experience, I'd have to disagree with you with respect to the Nexus, although you compare it to a phone that I do not have. More often than not, when Nexus has 1 or even 2 bard of 3G the link is totally unreliable and in most cases the application ends up showing a message box that says "no connection available: retry" (not exact wording), unless it switches to EDGE, there's no guarantee data will be exchanged with the cloud. On the very same spot, at the very same time, Touch Pro2 is able to maintain at least 2 bars of 3G and download speeds of 600 Kbps, while the Nexus is forced to 130 Kbs.
I drove today 25 miles (office to home) checking the nexus behavior, and only in very rare instances was able to keep full bars of 3G, in places where I know the 3G is strong.
I have also not seen the Nexus connecting through HSPA, only EDGE or UMTS, but I don't blame Nexus for that. It could be that this area has not been upgraded, in spite of T-Mo announcement that 100% of its network was HSPA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does not indicate on the notification bar when it connects to hsdpa, but if you go to settings, about phone, status you will see it show any one of the following: gprs, edge, umts, hsdpa. BTW my htc magic never showed hsdpa, always stayed on umts (when in 3g), not sure if this is because of the difference in notification between 1.6 and 2.1 or whether the nexus one really does connect at higher speeds than magic. I also have another phone on the same network in my household, which is a blackberry bold 9700 and it gets similar reception to nexus one, alternating between gprs/edge/3g in my house.

I am having this 3g/edge problem aswell, i am also not able to be on wifi and 3g at the same time.

Blueman101 said:
I am having this 3g/edge problem aswell, i am also not able to be on wifi and 3g at the same time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you connect over wifi the phone disconnects from the mobile network (gprs/3g) and instead uses wifi connection. It is not possible to be connected to both.

A cross-country trip, the Froyo Radio and what it might mean to you!

So I just recently took a trip from northern California to Tennessee and had some interesting results with the Froyo radio. For reference I own the ATT-version Nexus One and have data roaming enabled.
When I used the phone before Froyo radio I had many problems with the 3G switching to Edge and back when needed which caused random data dropouts. Even turning the phone off and back wouldn't force the phone to switch connections to Edge when needed which would make me very frustrated in times of need.
On my trip I found something very interesting, not only did 3G and Edge switch almost perfectly, but Edge performed MUCH faster than before. While it isn't as important now in a world of 3G coverage, when I was on the "edge" of civilization I still got surfing speeds that were not far behind that of 3G speeds. My browsing, and most importantly Google Maps usage rarely suffered a performance hit despite where I was or what type of connection was available to my phone.
There was a difference between performance; 3G would act like Comcast and Edge would be a little behind, but in terms of actually surfing the Internet the extra 2-5 seconds it took to load up a desktop webpage didn't make a difference.
Technically the bandwidth speeds were much different. 3G performed from 1 to a max of 2 megabits down and .3-1 megabits up, while Edge showed speeds of 300-500 kbps down and 100-200 up.
One thing I did notice throughout the trip is the Nexus One's signal meter did not report correctly, there were times where it showed no signal and I had super fast connection, and also times when it would show full or near-full bars and there was no connection.
Hope someone finds this info useful!!! I'm very happy with the coverage my Nexus One gets with the Froyo radio now!

I have always found that my nexus holds calls and has fast data showing zero bars. One reason I've always loved the nexus

Just a point of clarification, EDGE has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 473.6 kbits/s for 8 timeslots.
In real world conditions EDGE should have throughput of 236.8kbit/s with 4 timeslots(which is what most carriers employ).
Dan

Wonder if there's and app/mod to replace the signal bar with the actual signal #s?

Hey Sellitus, what else did you find working/not working on that trip?
I am considering a longer drive (SF to NY) and want to know about battery life, apps that were really handy, and which weren't.

SiNJiN76 said:
Wonder if there's and app/mod to replace the signal bar with the actual signal #s?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hey that would be nice. just like how cyanogen puts the battery percentage, it would be nice to have the dBm level of signal overtop of the signal meter.

RogerPodacter said:
hey that would be nice. just like how cyanogen puts the battery percentage, it would be nice to have the dBm level of signal overtop of the signal meter.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The dBm and signal bar IMO opinion are rather pointless in regards to data. Having a very poor 3G signal will always be faster than a full GPRS signal.

Also, a signal meter in terms of DB would jump around quite a bit...

sprinkles said:
Hey Sellitus, what else did you find working/not working on that trip?
I am considering a longer drive (SF to NY) and want to know about battery life, apps that were really handy, and which weren't.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well for ATT I hit data roaming quite a few times, and although it worked on edge pretty quickly during those times it would randomly drop when the R was showing randomly. I think what happened a lot on the trip is when I was out in the middle of nowhere bouncing between towers would cause random dropouts, but they were usually no more than a few seconds.
I don't remember which apps specifically though a few also did not like the trip, but most would hang and resume in a few seconds after data was reconnected even if the signal strength showed it was connected the entire time with signal. Sometimes Google Maps hung, though it was rare and I noticed it more because I used it near constantly on the trip.
If I were to give advice to anyone looking at a cross country trip, buy a map or get offline GPS maps to help. We bought a map and it proved valuable at times, though we rarely needed it.

I wonder if the "enable data while roaming" setting had anything to do with that. Maybe an internal bug.

torchedlh said:
Also, a signal meter in terms of DB would jump around quite a bit...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know how a number jumping around would be any different than a graphical signal meter jumping around. The iPhone has had this hack for a long time where you can replace the signal meter with the dBm reading. Though I've never owned the iPhone, but seen it on friend's iPhone before.
I know I'm often going into the android settings to look at my dBm reading, didn't jump around too much for me to see.

I've been having some reception issue lately with AT&T around my hometown (usually its quite good),so I did some googling, and found plenty of info on radio signal, and how to interpret -dBm, but I'm still baffled by the ASU. I really couldn't find much, just some random post on a random forum that left me with some questions:
In a 3G network your cell phone tries to open three channels to three radios so they can locate you and hand you off properly.
Those three channels make up you ACTIVE SET.
ASU is ACTIVE SET UPDATES or the rate at which your phone is able to update its location to the towers/radios.
This rate is affected by signal strength, load, and probably a lot of other factors that I haven't puzzled out yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can anyone shed some more light on this? Usually at home I have 2 bars of HSDPA, somehwere in the -90s dBm, and anywhere from 4-8 asu.

Theory as to why there is such a difference in some people's battery life times

I live in Idaho. Sprint advertises that they have 'mammoth coverage' around here, but they're wrong. They don't. Well, they have coverage (except for my house and office) and the 3G/4G speeds are usually complete **** unless you're within sight of a tower.
Data from the towers out in Caldwell haven't worked for over 2 months and Sprint claims that they're working just fine and have recently been updated - apparently they updated to dial-up. I really wonder how they're even selling phones over there right now.
Idaho = Battery life is usually 5 to 10 hours with normal usage.
2 weekends ago I was in Omaha and used my evo a little bit less than normal, but I could get through the whole day and still have 50%+ battery life left. The 3G speeds were also 2x better, as well as service in general.
I think it depends on where you're located and if sprint has maintained/updated their towers. I also think that most of the towers in Nampa/Caldwell (20 mi. out of Boise) are older nextel towers, which are probably complete ****/half working.
Just my theory.

Sounds plausible, but I have no idea scientifically speaking. I could guess but I don't think it would be productive.
My honest suggestion? Post this over at the dslreports.com forums; there were some really knowledgeable people lurking there.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

I agree. In addition to rogue apps/processes, it seems that weak network is #2 on my list of things to check when my batt life is draining too much.

This isn't really a theory, it is fact. If you have bad coverage you can basically watch your battery drain. I could drain mine dead overnight by leaving my phone unplugged and in the basement.. I had 1 bar of roaming service. I now hqve an airave and battery life drains much less overnight.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

teamgreen02 said:
This isn't really a theory, it is fact. If you have bad coverage you can basically watch your battery drain. I could drain mine dead overnight by leaving my phone unplugged and in the basement.. I had 1 bar of roaming service. I now hqve an airave and battery life drains much less overnight.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ive had my batter die in 3 hours because of no service. I watched my battery go from 70% to 30% in 1 hour because of no signal. Since I'm not running CM6 the roam control app has been well worth the couple of bucks. No more missed calls and far less battery drain when im in low signal areas.

Poor 3G low signal is the biggest battery problem for Android!
Android (not the Evo but the entire OS) has a very poor system for dealing with Low Signal for 3G and it does NOT automatically switch over to 2G when it's supposed to which CAN and DOES result in greatly increased battery life.
Other phone OS's do this or are supposed to do this but for some reason Google has just not implemented a good system for dealing with this COMMON issue.
I use a program called JuiceDefender (Paid version is best but the free version will prove to you how useful it is) and it is literally the best app I run on my Evo. Overnight I went from my phone dying by 4pm when working at a location with low signal to having it last multiple days in some cases depending on my usage.
Do yourselves a favor, Get this application and if you have your phone rooted you get many extra features out of the full version. Can't speak highly enough of this application.
Tim

teamgreen02 said:
This isn't really a theory, it is fact. If you have bad coverage you can basically watch your battery drain. I could drain mine dead overnight by leaving my phone unplugged and in the basement.. I had 1 bar of roaming service. I now hqve an airave and battery life drains much less overnight.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with that and know that when you have 0/1/2 bars it really drains your battery life, however, I get the same battery life if I'm at home all day using it (0/1/2 bars), or if I'm at college and have 5 bars all day and I'm not using it quite as much.
I have fresh 3.3 with the htc kernel 53 fps (and all the latest radios/pri/prl/ect.) and have seen much improved battery life, but it's still the exact same.
I also have an airave at the office (which is out in Caldwell where the data doesn't even work) for the other two people on my plan, and while they have seen slightly less battery drain since we got the airave (for free), it's not a mind-blowing difference, other than the data actually works. They're also running the 2.1 stock, but rooted with unrevoked.
I guess I'm wondering if staying connected to a tower with older tech/Nextel uses more power than if it's connected to a sprint tower.

Hrshycro said:
I think it depends on where you're located and if sprint has maintained/updated their towers. I also think that most of the towers in Nampa/Caldwell (20 mi. out of Boise) are older nextel towers, which are probably complete ****/half working.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's no way your Evo is working off of any Nextel towers. Those are IDEN and your Evo is CDMA...not happening. It's been known for years now that if you have poor/no signal, your battery will drain rapidly as the device will constantly search for a better signal.

anthony67 said:
There's no way your Evo is working off of any Nextel towers. Those are IDEN and your Evo is CDMA...not happening. It's been known for years now that if you have poor/no signal, your battery will drain rapidly as the device will constantly search for a better signal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good to know - How do people get Sprint Phones to work on Boost mobile then? Boost is using nextel towers, or that's what I've read several times.
I agree with that and know that when you have 0/1/2 bars it really drains your battery life, however, I get the same battery life if I'm at home all day using it (0/1/2 bars), or if I'm at college and have 5 bars all day and I'm not using it quite as much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Hrshycro said:
Boost is using nextel towers, or that's what I've read several times.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're half right. Boost does use nextel towers--For iDen phones. They do use the Sprint network for CDMA phones. Basically boost carries both CDMA and iDen phones.
As for how people get Sprint phones to work with Boost(CDMA)... Hm... Let's just say they do something shady and possibly illegal...They clone ESNs.