Database Users

Battery with 3g

Has anyone experienced the drain on the battery with 3g, as my Battery does not last a night when using 3g, but I was in the 3g free zone (gsm only) during the weekend and the battery lasted the whole weekend.

My battery will drain 50% quicker when in a 3G area, Somtimes I set the device to use standard GSM frequencies to keep the battery alive.

I'd guess it is the switching that causes the battery drain (at least this is the case with most 3G phones ) if you spend a lot of time (i.e. your workplace or home) on a "borderline" area your battery will get sapped pretty quickly
Setting the phone to use one band and stick to it (practically , this has to be GSM / 2g for a constant signal ) is the best soloution , until such time as blanket 3G coverage
Pain in the neck really

shark1 said:
Has anyone experienced the drain on the battery with 3g, as my Battery does not last a night when using 3g, but I was in the 3g free zone (gsm only) during the weekend and the battery lasted the whole weekend.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
same with me, i need to plug in the charger every ~40 hours. i live i 3G area, also using web'n'walk often...

I get way less than this. I have push email enabled, which keeps the internet connected constantly. However in my house I only get one-bar of 3g - often flipping to full four-bar GPRS
I only get about 24 hours between charges!

I have got serious 3G battery draining problems too.
How do I set up the TyTN to only use 2G ??
Thanks,
Martin

- Tap the phone icon on the top menu bar;
- Select settings;
- Select band;
- For select your network type: select GSM
- For select your GSM/UMTS band: select Auto
This setting works great for me on Cingular on an old AT&T SIM in and around Washington, DC. THe battery life is also very good. Also remember as posted on another thread in this forum that even if you do not have 3G yet in your area, if you get EDGE, you will see faster speeds on the TyTN. The TyTN has a new feature called Extended TBF Release which improves the overall throuput.

Battery life on GPRS vs UMTS/HSDPA

Hi all,
Could anyone clarify that running on UMTS/HSDPA data drains the battery faster than on GPRS/EDGE?
Personally, I do feel the difference. Pls correct me if I am wrong about this.
Cheers,
Mark

Hi Mark,
Although the manual says there is a difference and on paper UMTS does require more processing power and therefore battery usage than 2G (HSPDA more so again but it's only active when browsing on an HSDPA network) in real life use you will probably not be majorly effected.
It can also be down to the location you use the phone. If it's a weak UMTS signal then the phone will be working harder to 'decode' the UMTS signal or if you are near a location area boundry your phone might be switching between location area A and B and transmitting location update massages alot which in turn will use more battery again.
I tend to charge my phone overnight and not once have I ran out of battery - infact I don't think I've seen it bellow 60% and I'm connected to UMTS most of the time.
Gav.

turn ON/OFF HSDPA

hi all,
Can anyone tell me how can I turn on/off HSDPA?
As HSDPA drains my battery like hell compare to a normal UMTS network.
What I need to do is to turn off HSDPA when I need to remain connected for a long period of time such as agilemessenger. HSDPA can drain my battery from 100% to zero within less than 3 hours. I strongly believe a normal UMTS (without HSDPA) can last the battery a lot longer.
Pls tell me if you have any suggestions or correct me if my thought is wrong.
Mark

Hello,
You can do it with fit4cat hermes tweaker.
I attach this ZIP file.
Good use

can anyone comment on whether this indeeds help with battery life? I need my data on all the time so any help on that front would be cool. And if so how much does it conserve?
thanks

NOOOO ... dont use the fit4cat update for this .. it's not supposed to be used on production devices that have their HSDPA enabled already ..
best option will be to apply the reg hack to enable the phone band settings on the Cingular 8525 (Cingular wisely decided to disable this, look on the wiki for this reg update) .. and select GSM to back down to GSM network ...
Depending on your usage of UMTS the device might get hot .. so using the GSM bands will definitely be helpful if the 8525 is getting hot ..

i had also created a cab for the band selection
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=283797

gravejoker said:
NOOOO ... dont use the fit4cat update for this .. it's not supposed to be used on production devices that have their HSDPA enabled already ..
best option will be to apply the reg hack to enable the phone band settings on the Cingular 8525 (Cingular wisely decided to disable this, look on the wiki for this reg update) .. and select GSM to back down to GSM network ...
Depending on your usage of UMTS the device might get hot .. so using the GSM bands will definitely be helpful if the 8525 is getting hot ..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your suggestions.
If you have read my thread clearly, I am not intending to downgrade my network back to GSM.
I am intending to disable HSDPA only, I still want my UMTS connection.
Mark

gui62112 said:
Hello,
You can do it with fit4cat hermes tweaker.
I attach this ZIP file.
Good use
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your attachment. I have successfully installed the tweaker, however, failed to run it.
Other than this tweaker, any other method to switch off HSDPA??
Again, I still need my UMTS, just want to turn of HSDPA (3.5G) only.
Mark

my bad ... didnt understand your first email properly ... And personally, I havent seen any such hacks to disable just HSDPA (UMTS still working) so far for the TyTN ... Maybe pof or Sleuth255 know something ...
Question tho - How do you know that HSDPA drains more battery than just UMTS?

gravejoker said:
my bad ... didnt understand your first email properly ... And personally, I havent seen any such hacks to disable just HSDPA (UMTS still working) so far for the TyTN ... Maybe pof or Sleuth255 know something ...
Question tho - How do you know that HSDPA drains more battery than just UMTS?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Made a simple experiment.
As I have tried between 2 carrier SIM cards.
Carrier A supports HSDPA, it drains my battery from 100% to zero in less than 2.5 hours with MSN or agile Messenger connected.
Carrier B supports only normal UMTS, my battery managed to survive around 8 to 10 hours with messenger connected as well.
I think this can pretty much prove that HSDPA drains the battery much worse compare to a UMTS network.
Mark

IMO that does not necessarily mean that HSDPA network sucks up more power than UMTS .. it's possible that Carrier A might have a really bad data network where your handset is timing out while trying to make a data connection and is constantly re-trying .. this could be a real drain on the battery ...
Anyways .. just my 2c ..

I have the opposite problem. I get much better battery life at home on the HSPDA network than I do at work on a UMTS network...
I charged my phone Friday night and used it for maybe 30 minutes on Saturday/Sunday (voice) and an hour and a half of streaming radio on Saturday and was still at 30% early this (Monday) morning.

A lot of folks get similar battery life with just HSDPA/UMTS usage...

In idle mode it is always UMTS signaling ( even you see HS ) hence if you are not in a data session the battery usage is the same
In dedicated mode, Uplink is always UMTS but the downlink is HS. It is normal that the battery consumption increases with higher bandwidth. Notice that if you remain iddle for say t sec ( set by the operator) the system will downgrade you to UMTS.

markyeungcy said:
Made a simple experiment.
As I have tried between 2 carrier SIM cards.
Carrier A supports HSDPA, it drains my battery from 100% to zero in less than 2.5 hours with MSN or agile Messenger connected.
Carrier B supports only normal UMTS, my battery managed to survive around 8 to 10 hours with messenger connected as well.
I think this can pretty much prove that HSDPA drains the battery much worse compare to a UMTS network.
Mark
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this could be caused by carrier A's tower being farther away, causing the phone to transmit at a higher power level. the data transmissions will make the power draw even higher, and you'll see extreme differences in battery life between the two.
hsdpa is slightly less power efficient than umts for a number of reasons (processor overhead, different transmit power and channel management protocols) but i seriously doubt it's an 80% reduction in battery life. i can't see many manufacturers buying into hsdpa technology if such incredibly poor power management was a side effect.

Help please, 2G & 3G problem

Hi guys,
I just bought the HTC Legend, I'm loving it, but I have a very big problem. The problem is that I want to force the phone to stay on EDGE and not going to 3G to save some battery. Now, if I put the phone to GSM Only, it won't make any data connection, but if I put it to GSM or WCDMA Auto, the phone works perfectly.
Please can anyone help? my phone is running out of battery with only about 4-5 hours of regular usage (little chat, 4-5 short calls, emails, a bit a of web browsing)...I'm sure that I'm not abusing. is it normal that the battery only last for just a few hours?
Please advise, thank you!!

jkzh said:
Hi guys,
I just bought the HTC Legend, I'm loving it, but I have a very big problem. The problem is that I want to force the phone to stay on EDGE and not going to 3G to save some battery. Now, if I put the phone to GSM Only, it won't make any data connection, but if I put it to GSM or WCDMA Auto, the phone works perfectly.
Please can anyone help? my phone is running out of battery with only about 4-5 hours of regular usage (little chat, 4-5 short calls, emails, a bit a of web browsing)...I'm sure that I'm not abusing. is it normal that the battery only last for just a few hours?
Please advise, thank you!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
According to the specs, 2G doesn't actually increase your battery life much, if at all.
Unless of course you're in an area where 3G is spotty and switching/finding 3G coverage can eat up the battery.

Kwen said:
According to the specs, 2G doesn't actually increase your battery life much, if at all.
Unless of course you're in an area where 3G is spotty and switching/finding 3G coverage can eat up the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see, but I want know if the phone can actually stay with 2G and still be able to access internet. Basically, if I put the phone to GSM Only mode, the phone just gives me voice service only.....
please help!!!!

I think htc solved this problen with new update 2.05.405.2

3G instead of HSDPA while sleeping?

As we all know, Galaxy S has major issues with the battery life, one of the biggest hogs being the HSDPA data connection. From my experience, HSDPA drains 5-10% per hour in standby on my Galaxy S, while the WiFi connection drains almost nothing during a 3 hours standby. So I was wondering why doesn't Samsung thought of replacing the HSDPA with 3G or even 2G (GPRS/EDGE) while the display is off? HSDPA should be active only when the connection is used by the user and not the background services like gmail sync. Push mail notifications work with slow connections like GPRS so why not give the battery a rest? Do I have a point and if I do, is there a solution?

on my phone HSPA is only on when I use data. It switches to UMTS (3G) when idle. My provider doesn't have any legacy GSM/EDGE network.

Yeah it would have to be a bit more configured than that, with screen off and data idle - for example I stream internet radio and constantly have the screen off, with 3G only speed there wouldn't be enough overhead for it to stream consistently.

Just turn data network mode off on the power menu? Puts the phone to 2g for voice and text....
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zorxd said:
on my phone HSPA is only on when I use data. It switches to UMTS (3G) when idle. My provider doesn't have any legacy GSM/EDGE network.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine doesn't work this way. After leaving the phone idle for at least 30 min, when I turn it on, the H is already active. I dont think it switches so fast from 3G to HSDPA. I'll monitor it for a couple of days to see if it falls back to 3G in sleep mode.
Turning the data connection off isn't a solution, at least for me. I want the background sync to work, but not on high speed, because it drains the battery faster.

That's a nice idea indeed. Practically, however, I have 2g all the time and a widget to enable 3g/h when required for browsing etc.

Thats a really good idea. I have tried looking for a widget that switches 2g 3g but can only find widgets that provide a shortcut. Maybe some day...
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