Moto G's reception vs battery life - G 2014 General

Been using my Moto G for 3 weeks and I'm seriously impressed by its ability to maintain excellent signal strength. I get signal where my previous NEXUS 4 would just give up. So far, I've have yet to see it drop below 3G; and majority of time, it maintains HSPA+ lock. Maybe it explains why the battery life can be somewhat erratic (when out and about). I'm guessing the Moto boosts the signal a lot more than other phones. After all, it is designed for developing nations in mind where the reception isn't all that great.
For the record, I live in London and reception here can be hit and miss. So it's great for Londoners also

I used to have an HTC One V, which had a good battery. However, after using this, I'm surprised especially with the bigger screen. But don't forget that battery life decreases with time I can't comment on reception since I'm in Egypt and reception is poor almost with all networks and phones

The Cortex A7 processor is extremely efficient. So power hungry apps have very little impact on battery life, which leaves the screen and radio. I keep the screen brightness fixed and from my experience, the radio has noticeable impact on the battery. When I'm at home, I get 7-8 hours. When I'm out and about, I get 5-6 hours, which is still pretty decent. I rather have decent reception than extra batt with no/weak reception.

Related

Large battery drain in cirtain locations

OK, I know there are numerous threads about battery drain etc etc but this is something slightly different,
Look at my sig for what i am running.
Basicly, I can get around two days of battery use out of my HD2 which i am happy with but i have noticed that the past few weeks i have been out at a cirtain night club and noticed when in this night club the battery drain is rediculous, in just 6 hours my batter went from 100% to 7%. Its happed that last few times ive been there, does anyone know why this may be?
In locations with lower signal quality (reception) radio is pumping more juice (battery) into GSM module to achieve better signal quality. My bed room has all 4 walls made out of reinforced concrete and if I take my HD2 with me to bedroom, in the morning I have 10% less battery compared to situation where I left it in living room which was better signal reception (big windows=more signal bars).
Basement location are also known as locations were mobile phones are struggling to achieve decent signal quality.
_X_ said:
In locations with lower signal quality (reception) radio is pumping more juice (battery) into GSM module to achieve better signal quality. My bed room has all 4 walls made out of reinforced concrete and if I take my HD2 with me to bedroom, in the morning I have 10% less battery compared to situation where I left it in living room which was better signal reception (big windows=more signal bars).
Basement location are also known as locations were mobile phones are struggling to achieve decent signal quality.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thats exactly what someone said to me earlier, it makes sence now i've heard it in that aspect.
Thanks for the reply.
I read something about how if the phone is set up for 3g, and there is a solid signal, it takes less juice than if its in gsm mode. But if there is a weak 3g signal, it takes more juice trying to find a better 3g signal. and so in those situations, its better to put it in gsm mode and keep it with a better G or edge signal.
Or something along them lines!! you may want to your phone in gsm mode when you go clubbing, see if it helps
the_cool said:
I read something about how if the phone is set up for 3g, and there is a solid signal, it takes less juice than if its in gsm mode. But if there is a weak 3g signal, it takes more juice trying to find a better 3g signal. and so in those situations, its better to put it in gsm mode and keep it with a better G or edge signal.
Or something along them lines!! you may want to your phone in gsm mode when you go clubbing, see if it helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im on it tonight, so i wil give it go.
cheers
+1 yea i agree just change the band settings to gsm this way the phone doesnt keep trying to connect to a poor 3g setting this will eat the battery like u said
Also if you have bluetooth on constantly in a club location you will get the vast majority of other phones in the place trying to make a connection irrespective of whether you are discoverable or not
still a larger than usual drain but changing the setting was cirtainly noticable.
thanks
I think you will have to experience some sort of drain regardless as there is limited signal in a nightclub, you cant really avoid that. I guess since its dark, you can put the birghtness of the screen all the way down, as said earlier, make sure bluetooth is off, erm, disable data connections?
Also, have you given your battery a full discharge, then recharge? You can get a much better battery life once you do that

The Epic 4g's Battery Life is Really bad...

These numbers dont look encouraging at all. Hopefully this 3g power drain isnt all hardware and can be fixed up in software...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3891/samsung-epic-4g-review-the-fastest-android-phone/8
icantdrawanime said:
These numbers dont look encouraging at all. Hopefully this 3g power drain isnt all hardware and can be fixed up in software...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3891/samsung-epic-4g-review-the-fastest-android-phone/8
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine is just fine. gets me through a full 8 hour work day and then some. Its right there with the evo and other android devices. Want better battery life?, unferclock it like iphone 4.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
rufflez2010 said:
Mine is just fine. gets me through a full 8 hour work day and then some. Quit trolling.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well mine just sucks as does the gps. My wife and kid was lost yesterday and the nav/gps would not work. Screw this piece of chit.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Battery life does suck. Can't do anything on the phone for fear of the battery crapping out.
Expectations
Not sure what you are expecting as far as battery life but I have spent hours doing everything from GPS to downloading apps from wi fi and I get about a good 7 - 8 hours. No problems here.
Battery life threads bother me.
You ask your phone to do everything but wipe your rear end. It does more than Apple ever thought about, and we demand even more as customers. Faster Data, faster processors, more ram. Guys I hate to break it to you - but you want battery life go get a feature phone or blackberry. Otherwise, quit complaining about all the stuff you ask your device to do on such a small amount of energy. If we would quit caring so much about design and weight, phone companies could pack a car battery into it for you - look at Sedio... completely ruins the aesthetics of the phone, but you get longer battery life!
<conclusion>
Shut up or give up, battery technology just ain't there yet - and probably will never be able to match our demands until we have little nukes in our pockets.
</conclusion>
My EVO was pulling roughly 15-20 hours of battery life out of a full charge.
Thus far, I haven't been able to break 12 hours with the Epic, doing the same thing and with roughly the same usage. It's more than enough for a day, and I'm almost never near a charger (office, car, home, etc) but it'd be nice to have an extra boost. Bought those 2 for 10 Chinese batteries as a just in case.
At work right now and while streaming dubstep.fm and chatting on aim, my Epic is discharging while it's plugged into the charger.
You people that come into ever battery thread telling everyone to quit complaining and lauding the 8 hours of battery life you phone gets are not only completely missing the point, you're also contributing nothing to the discussion and perpetuating this conception that a third of a day is more than good enough for a phone's battery life. I mean, ****, my laptops get 8 hours of battery life.
The issue here is that we can clearly see that an android phone can get as much as 4 hours of 3g browsing time and 8 hours of wifi browsing time. The fact that this phone fails to come even close to that amount is alarming. A 25% reduction 3g browsing time and a whopping 38% reduction in wifi browsing time should make you question what is going on in this phone. Especially since the manufacturing process that produced this SOC is supposed to be much more power efficient than the one that produced the HTC evo.
I for one am really hoping samsung is aware of this issue and that battery life can be improved via some software tweaks. I owned the HTC evo. I was able to easily get 20 hours of battery life out of that phone doing the exact same things I do now. I was hoping to be able to match that with this phone. But right now, there is definitely an issue. Any of you people that deny it are seriously deluding yourselves.
I too have been frustrated by the surprisingly poor battery life. I've been holding back on believing it is a real problem because the first few days I had my Evo, it too had terrible battery life. However, with the Evo, after some battery conditioning, a hard reset and configuring the phone for what I wanted it to do vs what it came configured to do (Ex: I do not need push email, google voice or 4G running all the time and 25% screen brightness with a widget to switch it to 100% when needed) the Evo stepped up to the plate and settled into a cadence of giving me over 24 hours of use on a single charge.
I've had an Epic for over a week now. I've used it exactly as I do my Evo. I configured it the same as the Evo and in some cases with more extreme battery preserving (Ex: set the screen brightness to zero and only sync email every two hours (rather than the Evo's every hour)) and I can barely make it 14 hours, and that is a 14 hour DEAD stop.
Two other issues that are driving me crazy are the GPS and 3G performance.
It seems that when I'm sitting at home, the GPS will lock in about 10 seconds, but if I'm on the road in a random place (when I need the GPS the MOST) it will simply not lock if I'm driving and if I stop, it will eventually (maybe 5 minutes) lock.
3G performance has been absolutely horrible. I put the Epic right next to an Evo and TP2 and the Epic will get between 1/4th to 1/8th the throughput of the others. If I switch to Wifi, all is well and 4G is comparable (although not as reliable) to the Evo.
I am a keyboard person, the only thing wrong with the Evo was it did not have a keyboard. The Epic is exactly what I want, but these three strikes are making it tough to love. The 3G problem should be easy to fix with an update, as for the GPS and battery I don't know. I'm anxiously watching Sprint / Samsung to see if they will produce an update (see if they stand behind this product.)
BTW, at the end of a day, the number 1 battery culprit (according to the battery settings) is the display. With approx 1 to 1.5 hours of use at 0% brightness with an all black background, it still takes 50% to 65% of the battery (people posting that Super AMOLED saves battery over LCD are simply wrong.) The next offenders are Cell standby and phone idle. I was experiencing the 50% no signal problem, the workaround to cycle airplane mode helped that. But it does bring up another issue, although I have not had any call drops, the signal strength is consistently two bars (out of 6) lower than my Evo and TP2 (sitting right next to each other. At my home and in my office, my Evo and TP2 get 5 to 6 bars (full signal) but the Epic is 3 bars. I know the bars shown are not a good indicator and I don't have any dropped calls, but I wonder if this is not causing battery drain. This also makes me concerned that the main problem with this phone may not be solvable with software, it may be poor antenna design / implementation.
Wow, if more people actually realized that the SAMOLED screen uses MORE battery when displaying white pixels, we'd see less threads like this and less articles like the one posted.
On SAMOLED screens, each pixel is individually lit. White requires the most light. Constant web browsing will kill your battery FASTER than anything else because white is the color of choice when it comes to mobile web pages.
With that being said, OTHER THAN WEB BROWSING the battery on the Epic is much better than the EVO.
hmm i made a thread on 3g battery drain just the other day glad to see some actual evidence to back it up.
hydralisk said:
Wow, if more people actually realized that the SAMOLED screen uses MORE battery when displaying white pixels, we'd see less threads like this and less articles like the one posted.
On SAMOLED screens, each pixel is individually lit. White requires the most light. Constant web browsing will kill your battery FASTER than anything else because white is the color of choice when it comes to mobile web pages.
With that being said, OTHER THAN WEB BROWSING the battery on the Epic is much better than the EVO.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wonder if we could hack together a browser mod to invert colors?
Kcarpenter said:
Wonder if we could hack together a browser mod to invert colors?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Heh. That would be nice. In the meantime, I use a darker wallpaper. When using the kindle app, I use white text on a black background. I keep my brightness at 0% (surprisingly still pretty bright) unless I go outside.
My battery if fine too. Turn off wat u don't need and you'll be fine. Mine lasts 8 or 9 hours. U can't expect to use this beast at full power doing everyting all the time and expect this 1500 battery t be magically long lasting. Same prob with evo. Tame the beast
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
A-effing-men man. The more features the phone has (or that you use), of course the more battery its going to drain. I came from the 9630 blackberry and i had about 6-10% battery drain per hour so this Epic isnt too bad of a switch for me since i am a heavy user.
Kcarpenter said:
Battery life threads bother me.
You ask your phone to do everything but wipe your rear end. It does more than Apple ever thought about, and we demand even more as customers. Faster Data, faster processors, more ram. Guys I hate to break it to you - but you want battery life go get a feature phone or blackberry. Otherwise, quit complaining about all the stuff you ask your device to do on such a small amount of energy. If we would quit caring so much about design and weight, phone companies could pack a car battery into it for you - look at Sedio... completely ruins the aesthetics of the phone, but you get longer battery life!
<conclusion>
Shut up or give up, battery technology just ain't there yet - and probably will never be able to match our demands until we have little nukes in our pockets.
</conclusion>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Anyone know of any extended batteries for it? I was quite happy with my G1's thickness, so adding a few mm on here should be fine.
(Also, screw form over function - last thing I want is a pretty, comfortable brick.)
Lol I had the same issue, so im taking it back and sticking with my evo and its badass extended battery
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk
DJPUSA said:
Not sure what you are expecting as far as battery life but I have spent hours doing everything from GPS to downloading apps from wi fi and I get about a good 7 - 8 hours. No problems here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really sad when "a good 7 - 8 hours. No problems here" is now the yard stick battery life we expect from smartphones. Nothing smart there really.
TheMostToys said:
I too have been frustrated by the surprisingly poor battery life. I've been holding back on believing it is a real problem because the first few days I had my Evo, it too had terrible battery life. However, with the Evo, after some battery conditioning, a hard reset and configuring the phone for what I wanted it to do vs what it came configured to do (Ex: I do not need push email, google voice or 4G running all the time and 25% screen brightness with a widget to switch it to 100% when needed) the Evo stepped up to the plate and settled into a cadence of giving me over 24 hours of use on a single charge.
I've had an Epic for over a week now. I've used it exactly as I do my Evo. I configured it the same as the Evo and in some cases with more extreme battery preserving (Ex: set the screen brightness to zero and only sync email every two hours (rather than the Evo's every hour)) and I can barely make it 14 hours, and that is a 14 hour DEAD stop.
Two other issues that are driving me crazy are the GPS and 3G performance.
It seems that when I'm sitting at home, the GPS will lock in about 10 seconds, but if I'm on the road in a random place (when I need the GPS the MOST) it will simply not lock if I'm driving and if I stop, it will eventually (maybe 5 minutes) lock.
3G performance has been absolutely horrible. I put the Epic right next to an Evo and TP2 and the Epic will get between 1/4th to 1/8th the throughput of the others. If I switch to Wifi, all is well and 4G is comparable (although not as reliable) to the Evo.
I am a keyboard person, the only thing wrong with the Evo was it did not have a keyboard. The Epic is exactly what I want, but these three strikes are making it tough to love. The 3G problem should be easy to fix with an update, as for the GPS and battery I don't know. I'm anxiously watching Sprint / Samsung to see if they will produce an update (see if they stand behind this product.)
BTW, at the end of a day, the number 1 battery culprit (according to the battery settings) is the display. With approx 1 to 1.5 hours of use at 0% brightness with an all black background, it still takes 50% to 65% of the battery (people posting that Super AMOLED saves battery over LCD are simply wrong.) The next offenders are Cell standby and phone idle. I was experiencing the 50% no signal problem, the workaround to cycle airplane mode helped that. But it does bring up another issue, although I have not had any call drops, the signal strength is consistently two bars (out of 6) lower than my Evo and TP2 (sitting right next to each other. At my home and in my office, my Evo and TP2 get 5 to 6 bars (full signal) but the Epic is 3 bars. I know the bars shown are not a good indicator and I don't have any dropped calls, but I wonder if this is not causing battery drain. This also makes me concerned that the main problem with this phone may not be solvable with software, it may be poor antenna design / implementation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wasn't SuperAmoLED supposed to be the wunderkid technology battery life saver? It seems not to be the case with these descriptions like yours. What gives? So it looks better than LCD but sucks just as much juice??

3G vs 4G Power Consumption

I've been using USB-tethering over a 3G connection getting anywhere from 0-2 bars in my signal strength indicator at work. The battery level usually remains steady at the same level while I'm tethered.
Now, i'm in Las Vegas and USB-tethering over a 4G connection, with full signal strength. (Does signal strength fluctuate with 4G, or will the signal strength indicator always display "full" in a 4G area?) To my surprise, the battery is actually receiving a net positive charge, as my battery level has steadily increased while I'm USB-tethered.
Also, I notice the phone is cooler to the touch than when I'm USB-tethered over a 3G connection.
Obviously, all of these observations are incidental and anecdotal, but I thought I read previous posts here that 4G drains batteries faster than 3G, but I'm not seeing that being the case.
Is the 3G signal strength a factor for power consumption?
I believe there is a bug with the 3g radio that's causing a higher battery drain. Someone on here was talking about that
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
I can also say that I too am experiencing the same. 4g doesnt really drain battery that much more (if it is more) than 3g on my Epic. I can go 12 and a half hours with 4g on all day and normal usage...
I find the 4G battery drain consistent moderate drain. You would expect net positive charge while USB tethered as we get 500 ma charging it and no single function can use 500 ma.
4G is still a power hog, and noticeable when not charging, but you are right the amount of 3G cn be pretty bad.
As far as I can tell the 3G seems to draw massive power under poor signal conditions while the 4G doesn't change power, it just slows ,under bad conditions
I have not stringently tested it though, those are just my initial anecdotal impressions.
What I will say is my dormant overnight battery drain has done way up since the last update!

New X's battery more sensitive to cellular reception strength

I've owned and daily driven both the 2013/2014 X for about a whole year for each phone, so those are my comparison points.
I've been working in two offices for the past three years, I'm at Office #1 for 2 days a week, and at Office #2 for 3 days a week.
Office #1 has good reception, under the battery stats, my reception strength is all green. Office #2 is usually yellow, with some dips into red.
When I'm at office #1, standby time is WAY better on the new X. I woke up at 8am, it's currently 4:37pm, and I'm at 79%. Typically at office #2, I'd be at around 50% by now.
Oddly enough, both the 2013 and 2014 X weren't nearly as dependent on signal strength for battery life. When the new X has the chance to hold a stronger signal, battery life does greater than all the old phones. When the signal is poor, it REALLY struggles to maintain the same level of charge as when it's in a saturated network.
Anyone else with similar experiences?
I don't have emperical evidence, but that matches my experience.
Sent from my XT1575 using XDA Free mobile app
Wonder if it has anything to do with the "Motorola Modem Service" app....

Mobile standy battery drain

Hey. I am just curious. I always get big mobile standy battery drain, also during the night time. It is not affected by enabling or disabling location, bluetooth or wifi.
On battery settings - mobile standy is always bigger than screen drain, I think it is very strange. I am using 4G setting on phone, but anyway if I choose 3G, I got same drain. Please take a look into screenshots. I suppose that there is no fix for it, but I cant believe that all of users have same stats on battery also (4G users).
Honestly, it doesn't look too bad. I would say it is about as good as you can get on 4G unless you use Xposed.
From my experience, Moto voice was the culprit. When disabled I get about 4 hrs sot. Once enabled, cell standby drain jumps and sot drops to around 2 hrs.
Sent from my Moto X Pure using XDA Labs
SirMiks said:
From my experience, Moto voice was the culprit. When disabled I get about 4 hrs sot. Once enabled, cell standby drain jumps and sot drops to around 2 hrs.
Sent from my Moto X Pure using XDA Labs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Moto Voice is not the culprit or cause... The issue is cellular signal strength, and SD808 SOC does not use battery efficiently unless signal strength is excellent, anytime it drops the battery usage increases exponentially. The OP's Mobile Standby drain looks very normal to me.
acejavelin said:
Moto Voice is not the culprit or cause... The issue is cellular signal strength, and SD808 SOC does not use battery efficiently unless signal strength is excellent, anytime it drops the battery usage increases exponentially. The OP's Mobile Standby drain looks very normal to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hm I must be thinking of something else. Thanks for clarifying. Sorry for the misinformation.
Sent from my Moto X Pure using XDA Labs
SirMiks said:
Hm I must be thinking of something else. Thanks for clarifying. Sorry for the misinformation.
Sent from my Moto X Pure using XDA Labs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No worries... Moto Voice CAN cause battery drain, although it isn't common, it just won't show up as mobile standby, that is purely radio usage.
acejavelin said:
Moto Voice is not the culprit or cause... The issue is cellular signal strength, and SD808 SOC does not use battery efficiently unless signal strength is excellent, anytime it drops the battery usage increases exponentially. The OP's Mobile Standby drain looks very normal to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is why I primarily use 3G and will only occasionally turn on LTE. 3G signal strength is typically better in my area and it helps prevent the extra battery drain. For the most part, since I don't stream much video on mobile data, 3G speeds are more than sufficient for my day to day tasks like email, forum postings, banking, etc.
I kept Moto voice off for some time when I first got the phone because I worried about battery. I decided to give it a try one day and over the course of a couple of weeks I noted the battery drain was negligible despite always listening so I left it on. Any unusual battery drain during standby/sleep I've experienced since then has been due to a rogue app causing wakelocks but it has never been due to Moto voice that I could determine.
aybarrap1 said:
This is why I primarily use 3G and will only occasionally turn on LTE. 3G signal strength is typically better in my area and it helps prevent the extra battery drain. For the most part, since I don't stream much video on mobile data, 3G speeds are more than sufficient for my day to day tasks like email, forum postings, banking, etc.
I kept Moto voice off for some time when I first got the phone because I worried about battery. I decided to give it a try one day and over the course of a couple of weeks I noted the battery drain was negligible despite always listening so I left it on. Ancy unusual battery drain during standby/sleep I've experienced since then has been due to a rogue app causing wakelocks but it has never been due to Moto voice that I could determine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Might want to test with LTE on... In many cases LTE uses less battery than 3G in modern SOC's.
acejavelin said:
Moto Voice is not the culprit or cause... The issue is cellular signal strength, and SD808 SOC does not use battery efficiently unless signal strength is excellent, anytime it drops the battery usage increases exponentially. The OP's Mobile Standby drain looks very normal to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ou. If you are saying that it looks fine for you, then I believe it. I am living in the place where are a lot of base stations nearby, so I suppose phone is always switching between the cells to find the best signal at that moment. Thanks.
I was just worried that Mobile Standy is always in first place, and then I got only 2 hours of SOT.
acejavelin said:
Might want to test with LTE on... In many cases LTE uses less battery than 3G in modern SOC's.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I can get Tasker to do the switch LTE on/off via location I will give it a try. At work I usually get decent enough signal to get data and phone calls on 3G all day but LTE is extremely weak and drops regularly back to 3G so the switching back and forth between bands is murder on the battery and data consistency.
UPDATE: Gave a shot to running LTE on for a few days. Thanks @acejavelin. While my battery life is not really noticeably better, it is not worse either so I can enjoy the greater speed. I just have to manually switch to/from 3G when arriving and leaving work, but I can deal with it.

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