Database Users

Concerns about Xoom 4G upgrade (Verizon)

I have read some disturbing reviews about the Thunderbolt which is a 4G LTE Verizon phone. Although the phone itself sounds great, what concerns me are reports that the battery life is around 4-5 hours with 4G turned on.
So my question and concern is, once we upgrade the Xoom to 4G when available, are we going to be victims of the same poor battery life with 4G?

You're not required to have data connection on all the time. A toggle switch widget can fix the problem. Just turns it on when needed. But yeah I do agree that 4g and 3g will drain the battery.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

I already keep my Xoom on airplane mode to disable all radios that I don't specifically activate. Seems to help with battery life. I downloaded some toggle Widgets to shortcut all the steps.
[sent with Xooming Android technology]

wang1404 said:
You're not required to have data connection on all the time. A toggle switch widget can fix the problem. Just turns it on when needed. But yeah I do agree that 4g and 3g will drain the battery.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
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That is not really a solution. Currently with my Xoom, I can be on Wifi at home and when I am out, 3G kicks in. I do not want to toggle a widget when I need data (which is always) as I am sure most other people will not want to do. My battery life is totally acceptable currently with 3G and no toggling on/off. So will the 4G upgrade cause the battery life to be cut in half or worse?

keitht said:
That is not really a solution. Currently with my Xoom, I can be on Wifi at home and when I am out, 3G kicks in. I do not want to toggle a widget when I need data (which is always) as I am sure most other people will not want to do. My battery life is totally acceptable currently with 3G and no toggling on/off. So will the 4G upgrade cause the battery life to be cut in half or worse?
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I seriously doubt 4g will be much (if any) worse than 3g is now. The only way would be that you are on it more and keeping the screen on for longer times because it will RULE! lol

ghoticov said:
I seriously doubt 4g will be much (if any) worse than 3g is now. The only way would be that you are on it more and keeping the screen on for longer times because it will RULE! lol
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Just debating here but why do you think that? Why would Thunderbolt have a 4-5 hour battery life using 4G? You think that poor life is not 4G LTE related? And they have the luxury of swapping batteries which we cannot do with the Xoom.

I don't know how closely it is to sprint's 4g, but enabling 4g on my evo is a battery killer too. the good thing is that you can toggle 4g off and run in 3G mode. no need to disable data completely

madsquabbles said:
I don't know how closely it is to sprint's 4g, but enabling 4g on my evo is a battery killer too. the good thing is that you can toggle 4g off and run in 3G mode. no need to disable data completely
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That begs the question,why get 4g if you have to manage it manually like that?

keitht said:
That begs the question,why get 4g if you have to manage it manually like that?
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Keep in mind, that the 4g upgrade will be OPTIONAL and if you are seriously debating whether the upgrade will be worth it or not, then simply don't send it in for the upgrade! The less people to send it in (like you), would in turn mean faster return time for my upgrade! I personally don't give a damn about having to click a toggle switch when I want to download at crazy fast speeds!
Just my .02
I can also guarantee you that 4g will have a pretty noticeable impact on battery life. And to be perfectly honest with you, the HTC Thunderbolt (stock), even with 4g turned off, still has absolutely horrible battery life.

Instien said:
Keep in mind, that the 4g upgrade will be OPTIONAL and if you are seriously debating whether the upgrade will be worth it or not, then simply don't send it in for the upgrade! The less people to send it in (like you), would in turn mean faster return time for my upgrade! I personally don't give a damn about having to click a toggle switch when I want to download at crazy fast speeds!
Just my .02
I can also guarantee you that 4g will have a pretty noticeable impact on battery life. And to be perfectly honest with you, the HTC Thunderbolt (stock), even with 4g turned off, still has absolutely horrible battery life.
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Your response is very defensive and that is not the purpose of my questions. I am looking for meaningful conversation regarding the possibity that a 4g upgrade will significanty reduce battery life on the Xoom. All speculation but something to talk about.

So what I can gather is more or less around what everyone says. Get your 4g upgrade but don't turn it on and stick to 3g unless you feel you need the speed bump. So nothing will change except you know you have your turbo button-widget (yes old school) available.
That is unless it will be stuck on 4g at all times but looks like that is a feature that is toggled by today's hardware not permanent yet due to battery capacities.
Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using XDA App

foreverinpanama said:
So what I can gather is more or less around what everyone says. Get your 4g upgrade but don't turn it on and stick to 3g unless you feel you need the speed bump. So nothing will change except you know you have your turbo button-widget (yes old school) available.
That is unless it will be stuck on 4g at all times but looks like that is a feature that is toggled by today's hardware not permanent yet due to battery capacities.
Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using XDA App
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I am not one to complain without reason but I certainly hope this is not the case.

MY plan is to remove the dummy card right before shipping it out so I can put it back if I am unhappy with the battery life.

In theory, 4g should use less battery, not more. 3g chipset firmware is highly optimized, though, due to the technology having been around for a while.
It may be a few firmware revisions to hit minimum use for 4g, but it shouldn't use dramatically more than 3g.

The answer for this thread is simple. Yes 4G will use more battery power, that's the short end of the stick. If you live in a 4G area and don't need the speed boost and would rather save battery there will be a way to disable 4G and use 3G just like with the thunderbolt or evo
Sent from my Evo using Tapatalk

It isn't speculation. The evo has a long track record with 4g of a very similar type. 4g will be a battery hog. But I never use it on my evo unless I'm tethered or streaming. Otherwise I find 3g more than enough for most tasks. I will send my xoom in for the upgrade. But I don't activate it. I tether it to my evo. But yes it will be a battery hog. Whenever you use cutting edge technology they tends to develop the speed and reliability first and worry about power consumption last.

I work for Verizon and honestly rarely hear many complaints about the battery life on the Thunderbolt. Many of my customers get awesome battery life and we have 4g in my area. The LTE radio does consume more battery than 3g especially if you are downloading a large file or something. Another thing to consider is the Thunderbolt is like a big brother to the Incredible and that phone had HORRIBLE battery life. The Thunderbolt has a much larger screen, 4g, and does not have a very large battery. I don't see 4g having a huge impact for most people but for those that feel it helps there will always be a toggle widget or “turbo button” like someone said earlier. I will definitely be sending mine in right away...
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

Ferradinho said:
I work for Verizon and honestly rarely hear many complaints about the battery life on the Thunderbolt. Many of my customers get awesome battery life and we have 4g in my area. The LTE radio does consume more battery than 3g especially if you are downloading a large file or something. Another thing to consider is the Thunderbolt is like a big brother to the Incredible and that phone had HORRIBLE battery life. The Thunderbolt has a much larger screen, 4g, and does not have a very large battery. I don't see 4g having a huge impact for most people but for those that feel it helps there will always be a toggle widget or “turbo button” like someone said earlier. I will definitely be sending mine in right away...
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk
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Sorry but you either live in a nice vacuum or a bubble or a cocoon because EVERYONE I know with this phone (friends, foes and customers too) loves it to death but hates the battery life with 4g on, and by default there's no way to turn off 4g when not needed.
Had to root for some friends and show them the 4g LTE off widget that came out the other day. At least that helps.
As for the Xoom, even if you might not want to use 4g or sign up, still send it in to be done. Definitely will help with resale value down the road.

my friend has the thunderbolt and the battery sucks, and he isn't in a 4g area. Mr verizon rep is on a feel good drug, or something.

keitht said:
I have read some disturbing reviews about the Thunderbolt which is a 4G LTE Verizon phone. Although the phone itself sounds great, what concerns me are reports that the battery life is around 4-5 hours with 4G turned on.
So my question and concern is, once we upgrade the Xoom to 4G when available, are we going to be victims of the same poor battery life with 4G?
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It's going to drain more then the cdma radio does, at least until the technology and the software support behind it is more mature. But that is to be expected with bleeding technology.
Also remember that part of the battery issues on the TB comes from the fact that people use it alot more then previous phones. Streaming data is alot more power intensive then just the comparable occasional usage their previous device saw. I have a TB and if I use the snot out of it then yeah I can kill the battery in a couple of hours. However if I am busy and use it like I used my D2 or DX then I can get through the day without having to recharge.
Also you can turn just the LTE radio off when you are not using it if you are that concerned
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

Edge to save battery?

So I was reading up a bit on battery life, and someone suggested in some thread that they keep it on edge for most of the time, as it works fine for calls/texts/email and light browsing, and then just uses the 3g/4g when he needs extra speed, with like heavy browsing or youtube or something. So my question is - does being on edge use significantly less battery than hsdpa?

sunsean said:
So I was reading up a bit on battery life, and someone suggested in some thread that they keep it on edge for most of the time, as it works fine for calls/texts/email and light browsing, and then just uses the 3g/4g when he needs extra speed, with like heavy browsing or youtube or something. So my question is - does being on edge use significantly less battery than hsdpa?
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I personally see no difference in the two battery wise
Sent from my HTC Glacier

How do you even set it edge only? Can't seem to find the option
Sent from my HTC Glacier

I find that it makes a pretty big difference actually... walk around with the radio stuck on edge for a day solid and tell me you don't have better batt life.
It should be an option under mobile network settings
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

It depends on your usage. Everything is relative, if you do a lot of browsing on edge, it's taking longer to access pages and download files, so power consumption is smaller but happens over a longer period of time. What really matters is how solid your signal is. If you are ever in a spotty coverage area, it's better to put it on edge because then the radio is frequently seeking a connection and burning through battery unnecessarily. In that situation while on edge it consumes much less power to stay connected to the network when possible. But you won't see an overwhelming difference between edge and 3g unless you have a lot of apps/widgets that continuously update themselves. Some people will see significant gains from keeping their phone on edge, others not so much.
You'll have a better result rooting and installing a custom ROM like Royal Glacier or Orange Glacier that have been optimized and use more efficient kernels. With either of those ROMs you should easily be able to go the entire day without throttling usage before you need to charge your phone.

To the poster who asked: you can find edge only (aka GSM only) in menu>settings>wireless&networks>mobile networks>network mode.
Well the point is that you still use 3g/4g when you need it, it only takes a few seconds to switch, like for streaming audio/video or if you know you're going to be using the browser for a while, but for light browsing (i.e. looking up an address with google) edge is fine. I tried it for a few hours, and obviously phone and texting were unaffected, but everything else seemed to work smoothly too: gmail pushed through, widgets updated, etc. I guess I'll just experiment for a couple days to see if I notice any difference.
And yeah - I'll get around to rooting soon. I'm following a similar pattern with my MT4G that I did with my MT3G. Use it on stock for a while, then when I DO root, it'll feel like getting a new phone

Root you phone...
Before my phone was rooted i used an app called juice defender. It worked pretty well but not as well as i hoped. I was always skeptical about rooting my phone but found out my warranty covers rooted phone so i took the dive. Battery life has more than doubled. I use runCPU and you can practically turn your processor off while your phone is asleep.

I haven't tested it on this phone, but on my G1 I would almost airways use edge and it would last almost 3 days, but if I left it alone it would barely last a day...I've been wanting to try, but I can't bring myself to hold the phone back, it seems so inhumane
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

sunsean said:
So I was reading up a bit on battery life, and someone suggested in some thread that they keep it on edge for most of the time, as it works fine for calls/texts/email and light browsing, and then just uses the 3g/4g when he needs extra speed, with like heavy browsing or youtube or something. So my question is - does being on edge use significantly less battery than hsdpa?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's not really any difference because when you are on edge speed it takes much longer to download items and browse from one web page to the next. The ultimate result is that the batter is working just as hard if not harder when on edge speed.

3G Drain on Jelly Bean

Are we likely to see a fix for this? We know there is a problem with 3G drinking battery but how likely are we to see a fix. Solutions like disable 3G aren't viable for a lot of people, so I just wondered what peoples thoughts on this were.

Try changing your modem. You should see a slight improvement in battery life, nothing major but still better than nothing.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2

Yeah a modem did help but I still had a big problem. Are we likely to see a fix, I remember this being a problem with ICS which is why I reverted back.

Its not the modem. My phone stock uses the XXKG3 modem, and i have been using that on ICS and now into JB. Jellybean definitely has worse battery concerning 3G / H for some reason. I just barely squeeze a day out of mine.

Yeah, I was struggling to get even a day. I tried almost all of the Jelly Bean ROMs and they all suffered from the same problem. I really wanted to stick with JB, especially C-ROM because it was like a dream to use but on a good day I'd get about 7 or 8 hours maybe? I would always have to plug it in twice a day. Currently trying SauROM which is better but I'm starting to think that the best for battery life is genuinely a stock rom like JVS.

skezza said:
Yeah, I was struggling to get even a day. I tried almost all of the Jelly Bean ROMs and they all suffered from the same problem. I really wanted to stick with JB, especially C-ROM because it was like a dream to use but on a good day I'd get about 7 or 8 hours maybe? I would always have to plug it in twice a day. Currently trying SauROM which is better but I'm starting to think that the best for battery life is genuinely a stock rom like JVS.
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with any rom I've got a day and 6 hours depends on usage

On Jelly Bean?

did you limited your speed to 3g or do you also use hsdpa? if you use hsdpa, give 3g a try i think the battery drain in 3g is a lot lower ... in my opinion if you are not downloading 3g is fast enough to browse or youtube.
for just instant messaging you can give 2g a try

2G isn't really usable on Three mobile.
I don't know how to limit to just 3G. But yes I normally use HSPDA. That said, we should be able to use it without draining our battery

I'm not getting any major battery drain here. I can last a full day on HSDPA and or WiFi.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium

Really?

skezza said:
Really?
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Yup
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium

if you will buy a strong battery 1800-1900 mAh, you will see the different

Yeah, that's the alternative. Bigger battery I guess.

skezza said:
2G isn't really usable on Three mobile.
I don't know how to limit to just 3G. But yes I normally use HSPDA. That said, we should be able to use it without draining our battery
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You CAN limit to just 3G. You have to go to Advanced Settings or Galaxy S Settings (depends on a ROM) and go to HSDPA and put it to UMTS mode only. It'll switch it to 3G and will consume less battery
Sent from my GT-I9000

Helloworld294 said:
You CAN limit to just 3G. You have to go to Advanced Settings or Galaxy S Settings (depends on a ROM) and go to HSDPA and put it to UMTS mode only. It'll switch it to 3G and will consume less battery
Sent from my GT-I9000
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in my opinion, thats the point, go to settings/advanced/RADIO in your case hsdpa + hsupa should be ticket, simply tick umts an you should notice, the changing radio icon in the status bar (no longer h, but 3g).
your 3g and hspa power consumption depends really strong from the signal strenght and in your phone is connected constantly or changes often. bad reception causes a large waist of battery power.

My guess is you have Google Now / Maps running in background which always uses your data.

darristan said:
My guess is you have Google Now / Maps running in background which always uses your data.
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On slim 2.9, I found that removing G now, and turning off all location tracking increased battery life. Now I can get a day and about an hour/90mins of screen on time with data/wifi only on when using it. I suppose after more than 2 years of use on the one battery charging every day or more, there's only so much one can expect from a device and battery.

But isn't it recognized that this is a problem? The 3G Bug? Nothing to do with Google Now etc

theskymoves said:
Now I can get a day and about an hour/90mins of screen on time with data/wifi only on when using it. I suppose after more than 2 years of use on the one battery charging every day or more, there's only so much one can expect from a device and battery.
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in my opinion thats not enough, do you mean 24 hours or 16 hours? could be a little more with 90 mins of screen time, but you shouldnt need more.
inverted apps can by the way help too, avoid white and light colours as background

[Q] Anyone use got poor Battery Life ? and cell handover ?

Hi,
Had it a week now, and the battery life is awful compared to my prior Note 2. The old phone could get through the day, no problems, but this one is flat by 6pm.
I suspect its to do with the Knox process using 10% of the processor (according to usage timelines pro), even though ive not got Knox enabled.
Also it seems to struggle to reconnect to the 3g network (three UK) after losing signal. I have to put it into airplane mode, and off again for it to re-connect to the network.
Hoping both these can be fixed with a software update, but has anyone else found these issues, especially people coming from a note 2
thanks
George

On a poor signal mine is the same, my note 2 has a signal, when my note 3 doesn't. Also battery seems better on my note 2, on day 5 will see how a few more cycles of charge pan out.
Sent from my GT-N5110 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

I blame Exynos. The US and JPN versions will be much better.

Just turn off all the useless gimmicks such as air gesture and smart xx features and give it a few days before judging. I'm on fifth day with the phone and its temperature and battery life is better than it was on first day.
To give you an idea, that's my battery usage for today and I'm still at 43%. Didn't even start at 100% but 92%. Though I've been on wifi all day with good signal, not on data connection, so that helped with low battery consumption.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Samsung has the worst antennas anyway. where i am living i had 0 to 1 bar at my note 2. with note 3 it improved a little bit. it displays the same amount of bars but at least i can make phone calls with no problems.
At the same area i testet the new Xperia z1 and it has almost all the time 3 and more bars...what the hell samsung...not everybody is living in an signal oversaturated city....

After 5 days, battery life is impressive and improving (i think)
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 4

Snake-Plissken said:
Samsung has the worst antennas anyway. where i am living i had 0 to 1 bar at my note 2. with note 3 it improved a little bit. it displays the same amount of bars but at least i can make phone calls with no problems.
At the same area i testet the new Xperia z1 and it has almost all the time 3 and more bars...what the hell samsung...not everybody is living in an signal oversaturated city....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
San Francisco doesn't have a saturation of signal?

Same thing again and again.
Buy a top notch mobile and turn off all features that make it top of the line to make the battery last one day.
Really poor battery life on mine.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using xda app-developers app

I think it's a cell handover problem
I'm not sure the antenna itself is weak...I've pulled over 10 megs on 3g in a two bar situation. However it seems over keen to switch cells . I have a tool that logs which cell you are on and even when I'm stationary it keeps swapping cells
Also the number of bars on different brands cannot be meaningfully compared since some companies stretch the truth about signal strength by not having a linear scale *cough apple

Looks like the poor handover was the sim card... went into three store and they said it probably was .
I was very sceptical since it worked fine on my note 2 but it does seem to have fixed it
G
Sent from my SM-N9005 using xda app-developers app

My battery life is amazing compared to my note 2. I love it
Sent from my SM-N9005 now Free

Mines got better too
tbh its got better after a week of cycling.
Its still annoying as anything that knox is munching 7-15% of cpu power constantly and I dont even use it ... however its not as bad as it seems, since it seems its the CPU idling at 300MHz so in fact its less than a 3rd of the apparent figure...
Snake-Plissken said:
My battery life is amazing compared to my note 2. I love it
Sent from my SM-N9005 now Free
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You may try to
- turn Google Now! off entirely, voice search and answers still work just not the cards or some app controls (but there's S-voice for that)
- switch searching for wifi networks off
- I do not recommend turning wifi off during deep sleep, it causes more wakes and drainage on my Nex4
- use the S alternatives of as many Google apps as possible
- look around Maps to see if some sort of location sharing is ticked in, allow the only apps to access location data that you really need
- look around Know security, maybe it is part of the drainage
- optionally: try out AppOps to manage individual permissons per apps, I don't know if this works with the Note 3 though

Proccess that chewing up battery

just FYI qosmgr is chewing up your battery, if you are rooted and have root explorer (or equivalent) go into system/bin and look for qosmgr and rename it to qosmgr.bak...and if you want to to turn off mpdecision you can look for that process too.
I notice it helps with battery when phone is idle and nothing breaks yet on my end.

Battery seemed fine no drain get a days use no problem. What is that gosmgr?

sc-uk-88 said:
Battery seemed fine no drain get a days use no problem. What is that gosmgr?
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depend on your usage, if you are on HSPA+ or 4G your battery will eat up more noticeable. QOSMGR is a quality of service manager, I believe it manage your network speed base on certain applications. renaming it to .bak has help me putting the phone into deep sleep a little bit quicker.

G1_enthusiast said:
depend on your usage, if you are on HSPA+ or 4G your battery will eat up more noticeable
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not true. whichever mode gives you the fastest download, and the quality of that connection is good, is usually the most battery friendly. as soon as i got lte in my area, i started using it. speeds were so fast that i started using only lte, even wifi i stopped using. using lte, i notice that i get over an hour more screen on time than using hspa+ or edge. edge gives me the worst battery life. this is both my nexus 4 and nexus 5.
imagine this, download a file 20mb in size. via lte it takes seconds, via 3G it minutes, via edge(2g) it takes an hour. via lte its very fast, so the phones arent wasting time and battery downloading it constantly. because of this, battery on lte will end up much better. plus, on top of that, any of the newer phones that have lte are now using a more efficient lte radio. on my nexus 5, i average 5-6.5 hours screen on time. same cpu, but thats a smaller battery than the g2.

simms22 said:
not true. whichever mode gives you the fastest download, and the quality of that connection is good, is usually the most battery friendly. as soon as i got lte in my area, i started using it. speeds were so fast that i started using only lte, even wifi i stopped using. using lte, i notice that i get over an hour more screen on time than using hspa+ or edge. edge gives me the worst battery life. this is both my nexus 4 and nexus 5.
imagine this, download a file 20mb in size. via lte it takes seconds, via 3G it minutes, via edge(2g) it takes an hour. via lte its very fast, so the phones arent wasting time and battery downloading it constantly. because of this, battery on lte will end up much better. plus, on top of that, any of the newer phones that have lte are now using a more efficient lte radio. on my nexus 5, i average 5-6.5 hours screen on time. same cpu, but thats a smaller battery than the g2.
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That partially true. When you are on LTE, sometime you are connecting to multiple towers therefore using more power. With WiFi you will only using one WiFi module therefore not taking up as much. Typically when you are connecting to WiFi you are using alot less than network connextion this has been true since the beginning of smartphone.

Qosmgr its Linux program to manage CPU governor. The qosmgr program takes as a parameter an xml file with the configuration of governor.
That xml file is in /system/etc/qosmgr_rules.xml.

so its not recommended then?

martindar said:
so its not recommended then?
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I'm curious about this as well. I've read on multiple forums for various phone models that adding .bak to qosmgr (as well as to gsiff_daemon) helps improve battery life if you're seeing Android System use up a lot of battery.

I don't know if you are referri g to just stock rooted lg roms or customs. I don't have that in system bin and running vanir. One thing I notice chewing on batt is google play services… specifically gcm. Until now I didn't know what it meant but it is google cloud messaging. I'm wondering if I can use android tuner to disable it and if its ok to do so? Anyone know?
Sent from my LG-D800 using Tapatalk 2

There are a decent amounts of gcm service checkboxes. Just not sure if/ what it will mess with if unchecked.
Sent from my LG-D800 using Tapatalk 2

gm007 said:
Qosmgr its Linux program to manage CPU governor. The qosmgr program takes as a parameter an xml file with the configuration of governor.
That xml file is in /system/etc/qosmgr_rules.xml.
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are you sure its not quality of service in 802.11e
regardless of what it is, I have not missed it, and it does help with my battery.