Battery life with hsdpa and 3g

[Guest waynepyrah]

My Vario III battery life has dropped my 10% just by downloading a 1mb file onto it!!

During the day battery dropped to 30% just by having directpush on and 3g enabled

Today I have turned off 3G and battery life has improved massively

Is 3G really that much of a drain ??

[Guest FrankyG]

My Vario III battery life has dropped my 10% just by downloading a 1mb file onto it!!

During the day battery dropped to 30% just by having directpush on and 3g enabled

Today I have turned off 3G and battery life has improved massively

Is 3G really that much of a drain ??

I can believe it. You should try setting up a Bluetooth PAN connection with your laptop or PC and browsing using HSDPA...just watch the battery drain then, it's horrendous ;)

Although - battery down to 30% *JUST* having 3G and push email enabled is a bit severe to be honest. Nothing else running?

FrankyG

[Guest Ves]

When it's constantly active yes. Also I read that 3G consumes more power when in a weak signaled area to find that connection or signal from the mast/post/antenna

[Guest waynepyrah]

thanks have flicked over to just 2g today and still @ 70%

much better!

[Guest mcwarre]

thanks have flicked over to just 2g today and still @ 70%

much better!

Kinda negates a large part of the reason for having this phone if you have to switch off 3G ;)

[Guest Neil5459]

Kinda negates a large part of the reason for having this phone if you have to switch off 3G ;)

It does somewhat doesn't it :(

But 3G/HSDPA is only really of use when you are actively downloading files or browsing content rich web pages; for email, Exchange Server, simple browsing, GPRS is probably enough.

I've found the best compromise (on my P3600) is to keep connected on GPRS, and switch to 3G when faster speeds are more desirable.

@ves: Yes, 3G signals are significantly weaker than GSM signals, and have a poorer persistance through physical obstacles. When the device senses the signal weakening, it switches to a higher power receive mode, and may then keep cycling between 3G and GSM signal hunting, which has a large impact on battery life.

Even where the 3G signal is stable and strong, there is a noticable impact in battery life.

[Guest DJ_Enigma]

thanks have flicked over to just 2g today and still @ 70%

much better!

How do you do that?

[Guest waynepyrah]

I installed this app on my Vario III that gave me the 3G option on my comm manager

Quick and easy way to turn it on and off as and when I need it

Would be nice to have something like this for HSDPA... sure its that that drains the batts syncing with activesync directpush all day, its speedy but isn't really needed for push mail... its fab for downloads though :-)

duttythroy_black_3g_comm_manager.cab

[Guest wizzzard]

How do you do that?

Settings>Phone>Band choose GSM not Auto. It makes a hell of a difference to battery life. I think if you are always in a strong 3g signal area the battery life shouldn't be too bad, but as stated earlier if the Radio is constantly having to hunt for the 3g signal it uses more power than is acceptable.

[Guest Swampie]

Settings>Phone>Band choose GSM not Auto. It makes a hell of a difference to battery life. I think if you are always in a strong 3g signal area the battery life shouldn't be too bad, but as stated earlier if the Radio is constantly having to hunt for the 3g signal it uses more power than is acceptable.

I did that to my new Vario, but later in the day things started going wacky. Had been working perfectly fine (apart from heavy battery usage) for 8 days and then after switching to GSM mode I later got some messages popping up from the signal strength icon saying about some error (to do with the phone/radio stack). Device would not power off correctly. At the "Are you sure you want to power off" message, I clicked OK and the display went black, but the keypad lights were still lit. Couldn't turn it back on again (was still on), so used the soft reset button and it started up again. This time, it didn't ask for the SIM PIN - therefore phone was not usable. Comm manager said phone was disabled, turned it on and it asked for PIN but then straight away gave some error and Comm manager said phone was disabled again. I couldn't get into the Phone settings to turn back to Auto, because it was saying "Phone is turned off, do you want to turn on", I click Yes and it just sits there are the spinning circle icon. Trying to turn off again didn't work. The only way to completely power down was to remove the battery. And restarting then did nothing different - exactly the same errors. Removing the SIM gave the same errors, could not power down etc.

A hard reset was the only thing which got the device working right again. I've still yet found the time to get the device back and configured how I liked it...

Makes me wonder whether I should try switching to GSM again to see if it happens again.

Incidentally though, since I hard reset the device, battery life has been excellent. Okay, maybe I'm browsing less as I don't have my favourites installed, and I don't have POP3 checking set up for 60 minutes and Exchange push email set up - but standby time on 3G seems perfectly fine - no battery issues to do with keeping the network connection up.

[Guest snowgum]

Do you have a screen shot of the comm manager with this installed? Does it add a 10th button, or does it replace the data connection button with a 3 G button (like the one on xda developers)?

Matthew

I installed this app on my Vario III that gave me the 3G option on my comm manager

Quick and easy way to turn it on and off as and when I need it

Would be nice to have something like this for HSDPA... sure its that that drains the batts syncing with activesync directpush all day, its speedy but isn't really needed for push mail... its fab for downloads though :-)

[Guest gazbert]

I installed that app on my Vario III. When I go into comm manager now I only see 1 button. What's going on?

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

I have 3G switched off and enable it when I need high speed data (eg downloads). I don't use video calling, and for Direct Push 3G / HSDPA is completely unnecessary... i'd prefer the great battery life you get on 2G ;)

P

[Guest mandt]

Do you have a screen shot of the comm manager with this installed? Does it add a 10th button, or does it replace the data connection button with a 3 G button (like the one on xda developers)?

Matthew

It is the one from xda-devs, data discoonnect is replaced with the 3G switch. I use it and it's great.

PS for really scary battery drain you should try Live search and GPS tracking together ;)

[Guest waynepyrah]

Do you have a screen shot of the comm manager with this installed? Does it add a 10th button, or does it replace the data connection button with a 3 G button (like the one on xda developers)?

Matthew

There you go...