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Help 3g battery drain

B

brianbrod1

Member
OK had phone for over a week now. Getting decent life on wifi. Still dropping 1percent every 1to2 min on 3g. Is anyone else seeing this kind of drop?? Do I have a bad phone...?
 
What is your signal strength, in dBm increments, during your high drain rate periods? If its -93dBm, or less, you'll probably continue to see high drain rates when in those areas.
 
brianbrod1 said:
Think it is a radio issue I have full bars all the time....??
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Given that other people are not having the same issue (i.e. poor drain rate under good signal conditions, but long life via wifi), you may want to check your synching schedules "for everything", including Motoblur/contacts. Also, check your mobile network timeout settings. It may be set to "always on" vs. "turn off after 15 minutes of activity".
 
Brian I helped you out on your other thread. Did you factory reset and run the phone for a day with no apps to rule out a hardware issue?

Its a good idea to bump your old thread "build date" instead of create a new one so people know what trouble shooting if any you have already did.
 
colnago said:
Given that other people are not having the same issue (i.e. poor drain rate under good signal conditions, but long life via wifi), you may want to check your synching schedules "for everything", including Motoblur/contacts. Also, check your mobile network timeout settings. It may be set to "always on" vs. "turn off after 15 minutes of activity".
Click to expand...


Have smart actions set to turn off data and sync while screen off
 
colnago said:
What is your signal strength, in dBm increments, during your high drain rate periods? If its -93dBm, or less, you'll probably continue to see high drain rates when in those areas.
Click to expand...


Apparently I'm missing something here. The less bars I have the higher the dBm. 2bars running 97 and when I have 5 bars run about 82. So unless I'm not understanding this then I actually want low dBm. Getting same numbers side by side with my work blackberry.
 
brianbrod1 said:
Apparently I'm missing something here. The less bars I have the higher the dBm. 2bars running 97 and when I have 5 bars run about 82. So unless I'm not understanding this then I actually want low dBm. Getting same numbers side by side with my work blackberry.
Click to expand...

It is important to note that the dBm values are negative. So -82 dBm is actually significantly stronger signal than -97dBm. In this case the closer to zero the better.
 
eeraider said:
It is important to note that the dBm values are negative. So -82 dBm is actually significantly stronger signal than -97dBm. In this case the closer to zero the better.
Click to expand...

^This.

At best, you may see -51dBm to -55dBm, where you'll have full bars, and "strongest reception"...and subsequently, the least amount of battery drain. Conversely, when your signal starts dropping to -97dBm, and worse (e.g. -105dBm) your radio and battery are working harder to keep signal. Ball parking it, that drain rate will start to increase when your signal is around -93 or "less" (again, in negative numbers).

FWIW, when I had the Droid 1, when at my mom's house, my fully charged battery, normally good for 24+ hrs at my house (2 miles away), almost fully drained after (4) hours, where it struggled to keep "1 bar of signal", just by sitting idle.

Given what you said about "Smart Actions", I wonder if there is a bug, or its not set right. When you wake your phone, is the 1x/3G symbol already in the status bar, or does it appear after a few seconds? If its already there, the mobile data may not be turning off completely, or when it is supposed to.
 
Here's a question for ya...

You indicate that your phone is dropping 1% of battery every couple of minutes. How are you measuring this? Motorola smartphones typically report battery usage in 10% increments. Are you actually saying that your phone drops 10% every 20 minutes? Does your phone battery go dead in 3 1/3 hours? Or are you running a third party app like battery circle which may be estimating your battery loss to provide you more frequent updates?

If your phones battery is toast in 3+ hours then you definitely are having an issue with the phone... or with one or more of the apps you have installed on the phone.
 
OK seem to be making progress with 3g battery life. One thing I'm picking up from watchdog is the social networking app, and the sync app Is there any way to kill them without rooting phone?
 
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