Battery, or not the battery

[BarkingGhost]

I have an original MyT3g phone that I got ona new contract at the end of November 2009. This is with TMo on a two-line family plan and the other phone is GSM only.

Two days ago, I got up to a dead phone. Turned out the battery discharged overnight. First time that has happened to me. I plugged it in and charged it fully, but ~12 hours after a full charge it completely discharged again--and I never used it for anything in that time.

I charged it again and after about 5 hours noticed the charged had dropped to 59%. I went in to see what was consuming the battery the most and it reported Cell Standby, which I believe is the transceiver performing basic keep-alive with the TMo network.

By the 12th hour the phone was completely discharged again. Ok, is this a bad battery, or is the transmitter having an antenna issue and thinking the nearest cell tower is now farther away (and thus using a higher transmission power level, which in turn discharges the battery faster?

At the end of this contract, I am terminating this phone and 3G service (i.e. UMTS data plan) and replacing this phone with a straight GSM service. In the past year I have not really used any of the data services, and on those rare occasions its been rather poor in my area (suburb of Atlanta).

I'm guessing I can live with a 12-hour phone for 4 months, but wondered if anyone else experienced eerily similar conditions and found a resolution. I am running the latest ANDROID OS.

 

[BarkingGhost]

Ok, so I have conducted some additional observations, including charging and not using the cell phone. It takes 2.5-3 hours to fully charge and approximately 12 hours to discharge. In each cycle 98% of battery use is Cell Standby and 2% is Cell Idle. I then charged the phone and when fully charged, I removed the battery. I figured if it was the battery then it might still leak its charge [fractionally] while out of the phone. After 7 hours I put it back into the phone and turned the phone on. Battery was 100% charged. I'm concluding it is NOT the battery. There have been no ANDROID updates, no application updates, etc. and I have not been using the phone for anything. But something is causing the Cell Standby function to consume the battery at a high rate (almost as if I was constantly using it for calling. My next test will be to recharge the unit and then turn the phone off, but leave the battery in it. I want to see if the battery discharges while in the phone and it powered off. If this doesn't show any signs of a discharge, I'll try to perform the equivalent of a factory reset. Does anyone know if a factory reset can be done, and if so what version I should expect to see of ANDROID afterwards? I think it originally came with 1.5 or older (currently on Froyo).

 

[BarkingGhost]

Hmm, there is no equivalent of a factory reset for this phone. My final experiment was to charge the phone, turn off all data services, syncing services, and force 2G only and the problem continues. I replied to a thread on TMo's support forum regarding their seemingly battery-issue MT3G and then I got a response they have been having the exact problem for about the same period of time.

No coincidence. Unfortunately, TMo has decided to taken on the personification of AT&T and tell people they are SOL as it is a defective phone and they will not be supporting it. Well, TMo is now defective in my book.

I'll replace this phone with a non-smartphone and terminate service in 4 months. What a pity this is the state of wireless in the USA. The We Don't Care business generation.