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Help For those that live in a strong 4G area

thorthunderblt

thorthunderblt

Android Enthusiast
Do you keep your phone settings on 4G and not the 3G to 4G signal? Just curious cause as of right now i dont live in a strong 4G area. I might see it pop up every once in a while and i now the 3G to 4G signl thing is killing my battery. In a couple of weeks i am moving to an area that has a very strong 4G signal. The thing is that i work back where 3G is more available also that is where my family lives. I really dont want to have the phone constantly searching for 4G when im at work or visiting the fam. For those that keep it on 4G what kind of connection do you get when out of the 4G area will it automatically pop to 3G or does it go to the dreaded 1X signal?
 
I have strong 4G in my area, but I leave it on 3G so it doesn't drain my battery. If I know I'm going to want the higher speed (for videos or a lot of web browsing) I'll manually switch it as I need, but I leave it in 3G 99% of the time. In 3G I get at least 15 hours on a charge (still at about 40% battery at that point) and it's still plenty fast. It rarely goes to 1X, even in 3G mode.
 
So u have noticed that when in 4G only that the battery noticeably drains faster? Well that's not good lol. I was getting excited about leaving it in 4G only lol
 
I live in a strong 4G area and leave it on 4G. Sure it drains the battery faster but the 4G is why I got the thunderbolt. Verizon 3G in my area is very, very slow - slower than at&t and sprint's 3G. So basically it's useless for my own needs. Only during that 1-2 day 4G outage during May did my phone switch to 3G/1X on its own for any time period. The 4G drops have been rare in my area...
 
I live in a strong 4G area as well. It only drops out of 4G when I travel out of the area. I get a days worth easily out of my phone, but I'm not attached to using my phone as often as some do. I have found that my battery life improved after several charges - The first day I owned the phone I charged it twice, the next day I got through the day, and now I get about a day and a half on the stock battery, although I tend to charge it overnight anyway. Don't expect such miracles if you are a power user - The battery will drain quickly.
 
I have only had my phone for about a month and work from home...and I don't even know if my 3G radio works, lol. Dallas has pretty kick ass 4G coverage.
 
I'm back and forth on frequent trips between a strong 4G area and a weak 4G area. In the weak area, I see it fall back to 3G.

I have an HTC extended battery, and prior to the latest update, I could chew through the entire battery in 4 hours. Since the latest update, I can go more than 20 hours in the weak area, which is very close to the battery performance in the strong area.

Details:
I leave Wifi on all the time, but am not usually connected to wifi. For better signal stability around my house on Wifi, I turned on Advanced mode (popup claims it "may" use more battery--I haven't seen any evidence of this).

I don't use a task manager or one of those battery-saving apps (had too many random connection glitches when I tried it before).

I leave data connection on all the time, bluetooth usually off, and do a ton of music streaming using the Google music app. My mail settings use an Exchange server from the stock app, and the rest of my accounts are pulled in through Gmail pop access with the client set on push (this helped a LOT over using pop on the HTC stock app--in terms of both stability and battery life prior to the update...don't know how much it's affecting things now).
 
4G is faster, therefore it will use a quite a bit more battery. on 3G i could go 12 hours on a charge with heavy usage (lots of internet time, words with friends, twitther,facebook, google+, camera, about 10 messages, 5 emails, maybe 10 minutes worth of calls.

on 4G that would be down to about 7 hours.
i actually just did a battery calibration. on constant 4G, it took me 6.5 hours to kill my battery completely...that was streaming pandora for maybe 3 hours, local music some of the time, tune in radio (battery killer) youtube, music downloading,ect. so not horrible. this is on a new ROM/kernel so that probably helps some.

if i were you, i would just leave it on 3G/4G, it wont use much more battery than just leaving it in 3G mode. i also have chargers everywhere, and an extra battery coming tomorrow, so batter life isn't much of a concern to me any more.
 
I also live in a 4G area and I leave 4G on all the time. I don't actually USE 4G much though because I'm on WiFi 90% of the time. I have WiFi both at home and at school.
 
I live in a strong 4G area but work in a weak 4G area. I just keep a charger handy when I'm at work and don't worry about changing settings. I also have an extended battery handy if for some reason charging won't be convenient.
 
If I'm only making phone calls or sending texts the majority of the time, I don't need it in 4G, but I can always use more battery life. Leaving it in 4G when it sits in my pocket is like leaving my car on all the time, wasting gas, just in case I need to drive. I accidentally left it in 4G the other day and it drained the battery about 15 percentage in 20 minutes, and I didn't even turn the screen on once during that time.
 
it all depends on if you are concerned with battery life at all. if you are, leave it in 3G and turn on 4G when you go to search the web or are going to download a large file. 3G is sufficient to do streaming, e-mails,mild forum browsing, getting weather/twitter/facebook updates. anything beyond that, 4G is a great thing to have. just know that 4G is going to do all the above about 2 times as fast as 3G will.
 
Turdbogls said:
it all depends on if you are concerned with battery life at all. if you are, leave it in 3G and turn on 4G when you go to search the web or are going to download a large file. 3G is sufficient to do streaming, e-mails,mild forum browsing, getting weather/twitter/facebook updates. anything beyond that, 4G is a great thing to have. just know that 4G is going to do all the above about 2 times as fast as 3G will.
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yeah I am amazed every time i am in a strong 4G area (which i am about to be all up in it in a couple of weeks lol). The surfing and phone response is just so much smoother. I hate coming back to the 3G area and seeing the 4G signal go away:eek:.

I am not that concerned with battery life since im not constantly on my phone. The most i am on my phone is when i am downloading MP3's, and 9 times out of 10 my phone is on the charger when i am looks for songs. Plus the infamous car charger is always waiting for the hook up lol.
 
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