Database Users

"zzz" on the 4g sign

I have always wondered when the 4g sign gets the little zzz on top of it replacing the little wifi type sign, does it mean that the 4g is temporary disabled or that there's no data being transfered over its connection.
In short, is it equivalent to the arrows on the 3g sign being grayed out instead of colored in?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

yes, in other words its sleeping

Does that mean it's not draining my battery like it does on tha Evo ? Because they tell me to turn tha toggle off on my Evo if im not in a 4g area.I hope I made any sense.thx

Pito2k6 said:
Does that mean it's not draining my battery like it does on tha Evo ? Because they tell me to turn tha toggle off on my Evo if im not in a 4g area.I hope I made any sense.thx
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That is a good question. I want to know the answer to that myself. If your not in a 4g area then it will use up more battery because your device will be searching for a 4g signal. But if your getting 4g signal I don't really know if it uses more battery by keeping it on.
I keep my 4g on all the time. My battery life was crappy before using 4g and it just as crappy after using it.

Silent25r said:
That is a good question. I want to know the answer to that myself. If your not in a 4g area then it will use up more battery because your device will be searching for a 4g signal. But if your getting 4g signal I don't really know if it uses more battery by keeping it on.
I keep my 4g on all the time. My battery life was crappy before using 4g and it just as crappy after using it.
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i imagine that the radio for 4g uses more then 3g radios but thats because the tech is new.. so will it eat more battery idling then 3g? i imagine so

No, while ur 4g is on it pretty much drains the same amount of battery power, my advice is if ur not in a 4g area just b safe and cut it off...but the zzz's aren't really saving power if u wanna save power ull actually have 2 turn 4g off

I'm not an expert on 4G but I *think* the Zzz indicates 4G connected in sleep mode which keeps your mobile IP session up. This in turn gives the spectrum back to the tower you're on to use for active connections. If traffic originates on either side (e.g. from your mobile device or from the internet) the mobile IP session is still active so your device is addressable by IP, traffic can be routed to or from, and the tower base station controller (BSC) allocates some spectrum/RF to your device for the traffic to begin flowing. In theory, the base station controller could allocate multiple WiMax frequency bands if you needed the bandwidth, but that would depend on how the BSC is configured, the load on that specific tower (both on RF and backhaul), and what the demand was like. It would save some battery being in Zzz/sleep, but not as much as turning the 4G radio off entirely when you don't need it.
I'm on Quantum ROM 1.5 which is a Froyo Beta build - I've noticed I have enough battery life with this ROM to turn on 4G on all day if I feel like it, but frankly I'm around WiFi 95% of my day - so I don't bother with 4G unless I really need speed on the move (away from home/work).

shabbypenguin said:
i imagine that the radio for 4g uses more then 3g radios but thats because the tech is new.. so will it eat more battery idling then 3g? i imagine so
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I think you're right shabbypenguin. CDMA EVDO chipsets have been around for awhile and fairly mature. WiMAX chipsets are available from a few different vendors and haven't been around as long, hence probably not fully optimized for performance and power use/battery life.

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

How can I make my n4 on T-Mobile always stay on hspa +?

Its constantly switching from edge to hspa when it switches to h I have two bars then goes to edge I wanna force it to stay on h and stick how can I do that?
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

You on 4.2.1 or 4.2.2?
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium

You cant force it to stay on hspa+ all the time. Same thing applies to a WiFi signal. You can't force a WiFi device to stay connected to WiFi all the time when you're out of range. When you are out of range you will lose the signal and it will try to reconnect.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

twolfekc said:
You on 4.2.1 or 4.2.2?
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
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4.2.2
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

scream4cheese said:
You cant force it to stay on hspa+ all the time. Same thing applies to a WiFi signal. You can't force a WiFi device to stay connected to WiFi all the time when you're out of range. When you are out of range you will lose the signal and it will try to reconnect.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2
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I did this on my gs2 it had an option WC DMA only that's what I'm looking for here.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

You can change WCDMA preferred to WCDMA only in the *#*#4636#*#* menu... It doesn't mean signal will magically reach your phone though, it could just be the the N4 isn't as good at picking up a weak-ish 3g signal as your old device. I can't imagine they will have set it up to band-hop unless the signal on wcdma is somewhat marginal.

Azurael said:
You can change WCDMA preferred to WCDMA only in the *#*#4636#*#* menu... It doesn't mean signal will magically reach your phone though, it could just be the the N4 isn't as good at picking up a weak-ish 3g signal as your old device. I can't imagine they will have set it up to band-hop unless the signal on wcdma is somewhat marginal.
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I know I won't magically get signal I know I have signal it just keeps switching even tho I have signal in h. I thought it switches when it gets really weak I get really good speeds with two bars I don't consider that weak.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

horr1blek1tten said:
I know I won't magically get signal I know I have signal it just keeps switching even tho I have signal in h. I thought it switches when it gets really weak I get really good speeds with two bars I don't consider that weak.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2
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It switches in response to demand from the device. If your phone is idle or at the very least not using network intensive applications it will ramp the radio down to 3G/Edge. Once your phone detects that you're running applications that demand more network allocation it will adjust appropriately to HSPA+. This is a feature not a bug and if your phone was always using it's HSPA+ capabilities then your battery wouldn't last half a day. I don't even think you can force enable HSPA+ always on anyway, I may be wrong though. If you get it though remember to carry your charger with you.

ian577416 said:
It switches in response to demand from the device. If your phone is idle or at the very least not using network intensive applications it will ramp the radio down to 3G/Edge. Once your phone detects that you're running applications that demand more network allocation it will adjust appropriately to HSPA+. This is a feature not a bug and if your phone was always using it's HSPA+ capabilities then your battery wouldn't last half a day. I don't even think you can force enable HSPA+ always on anyway, I may be wrong though.
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I might have misunderstood your post a bit, but EDGE does not run on 3G. EDGE works on 2G networks. HS(D/U)PA(+) works on 3G networks. The phone should try to hold on to a 3G (WCDMA, whether that be using HSPA or not) network in preference to a 2G (GSM, whether using EDGE or not) network as long as a strong enough signal is available. Although it was not worded as such, I think the OP was enquiring as to why the phone was dropping to 2G when 3G signal is available, not concerned by whether that 3G signal was HSPA or not and asking if it was possible to switch to 3G only, and I explained how to do that. No modern smartphone automatically drops from 3G/HSPA to 2G/EDGE to save battery, I don't think modern modems draw that much more power when talking to a 3G network. The device will automatically fall back to 'normal' 3G data to save power when the data connection is not in use, but that's a different matter.

LTE Battery Life vs WCDMA and Tips?

Hey guys, just wondering if anyone has any idea how the battery life on LTE is compared to WCDMA and if there are any ways to try to reduce battery drain from LTE.
Also, would you use LTE/GSM (auto prl) or LTE/CDMA?
Thanks.

qwahchees said:
Hey guys, just wondering if anyone has any idea how the battery life on LTE is compared to WCDMA and if there are any ways to try to reduce battery drain from LTE.
Also, would you use LTE/GSM (auto prl) or LTE/CDMA?
Thanks.
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Use lte/gsm. There is no noticeable extra battery drain with lte. Just faster data speeds.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

No difference. Stock 4.3 with lte is amazing on battery

PouperPoups said:
No difference. Stock 4.3 with lte is amazing on battery
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szucsgf said:
Use lte/gsm. There is no noticeable extra battery drain with lte. Just faster data speeds.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
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Thanks to you both, and I wonder why that is?

qwahchees said:
Thanks to you both, and I wonder why that is?
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My best guess is that background data related tasks like syncing finish faster so cpu spends more time in idle and foreground data tasks like webpage loading finish faster so cpu spends more time in min cpu frequency.
By the way, try different lte modems. I had bad battery drain on .33 not because of lte. Battery is excellent for me on .27 and now the hybrid .27/.84 modems.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Hmm, one of the things that affect battery life most is signal strength. If you have poor signal strength, you will generally have poor battery life. I would say this is probably the #2 most important thing after screen on time
Having said that, where I live, I get much stronger HSPA/HSPA+ signals than LTE. At my home, I may hover anywhere from -77 to -89 dBm whereas with LTE it might be between -89 dBm to -95 dbm
In the battery graph, on 3G I get a solid green bar (the best) whereas on LTE I get the slightly yellow-green colour
Using Koodo in Scarborough (Toronto to anyone not in the GTA)

LTE Instability

I've had my opt for a couple weeks now and generally I really do like the phone. One issue that I'm having, that I haven't really read about is with my LTE signal. I have tmobile (usa) and admittedly I have relatively poor signal at home (-109dBm to -114dBm). I notice that every so often my LTE signal drops out completely and I get no data. At my work where I have excellent signal I don't have any issues. I've had several phones including the Oneplus One and I've never had problems with the signal dropping completely out like it does with the opt. Does anyone else have this issue? Are there any radios to try yet? or maybe just wait for a future update that might stabilize the radio? It's not a huge issue as I'm just using wifi at home most the time.

My receptiin seems bad. im in uk. Always 2 bars at house. Op2 always shows 0 99% of time in the indicator. however a signal app always says 28-35% signal. Wifi poor as well - massive drop of speed every couple of steps away from router

Are you using any apps to verify LTE signal and band?
I use LTE discovery.

useranonymous said:
Are you using any apps to verify LTE signal and band?
I use LTE discovery.
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Does your device allow LTE Discovery to continuously update it's signal data? I have to kill the app for it to change what it displays.
Hastily spouted for your befuddlement