ATT (AT&T) Microcell connection has increased battery drain

[ay42]

I've been mucking around with my phone for the past couple of weeks to optimize my battery life, and one thing I've learned in addition (and perhaps separate from) to the 2.3.6 WiFi issues is that connecting to my AT&T Microcell has resulted in worse power consumption on my Samsung Galaxy S2.

I left my phone on overnight with my microcell off, and after 9 hours it had used only 4%. About 2 or 3 bars connection strength.

Then last night I had my microcell on, and confirmed that my phone was connected to it - pulling down the system tray said AT&T Microcell and I had a full 5 bars. But this morning after 9 hours it had used 11% - so more than double.

In both cases the phones were just sitting there idle, so I wasn't playing with it at all to try to minimize any variables. I had also power cycled the phone prior to starting each test as well.

I had thought that the more bars, the less power your phone had to use to communicate to the tower, and therefore less battery power used. Now this is probably true as a general rule, but apparently this isn't the case with the microcell. The microcell had 5 bars and the ATT cell system just 2 bars, and yet the microcell drew more than 2x the power.

My wife and I both have a SGS2 and I reproduced the behavior on both devices.

It would be cool if anyone else could confirm this.

 

[webwarmiller]

There is definitely an issue the AT&T's MicroCell and Samsung devices (and HTC I believe as well). My Skryrocket will lose around 1% of battery life per hour in sleep when NOT connected to the microcell and around 10% an hour when connected.

Some things I've noticed.

1. If I have wifi disabled and show a full 5 bars of Microcell along with 4G (fauxG), my phone cannot access data whatsoever. Data is 100% fine on non-Mcell 3/4G as long as the phone is NOT connect to the Mcell.

2. My phone is set to disable wifi whenever it sleeps. So, as you can guess from the above, when my phone sleeps while connected to the Mcell it cannot handle data. This is probably the reason why it sucks battery like a fat girl with a milkshake as it has no data connectivity and keeps attempting to restore it.

3. If I manually turn off cellular data the battery drain is minimal when connected to the Mcell. Again this all boils down to #1. As the phone no longer attempts to connect to cellular data it doesn't fight itself and the battery drains at the normal 1%/hour.

4. If I power cycle my phone it will come on with LTE for data and still be connect to the Mcell. All is well at this point. However, once I make or receive a call the phone will switch over completely to the Mcell and not let go until powered off or out of range.

5. Finally, neither AT&T nor Samsung is willing to admit or fix anything.....of course.

 

[melder52]

I would agree that the Microcell could be a battery issue especially if it's like mine and phones in my house tend to lose connection to it randomly, I'm pretty positive my Microcell is on it's last legs but ATT won't replace it. IMO the search for the Microcell probably causes drain and could be an issue while the phone "sleeps". Also having WiFi shut off when sleeping is a definite battery drain and really should only be used if on 2.3.6 where WiFi is a worse offender. If you are on 2.3.4 then leave WiFi on.