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Crookshanks
join:2008-02-04
Binghamton, NY

Crookshanks to trparky

Member

to trparky

Re: You know...

I haven't seen the battery draining issues with my Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Perhaps the newer radio firmware addressed the problem, but my phone drains at about 1% to 1.5% per hour (according to BetterBatteryStats) when it's idle on LTE.

The real battery hog with this phone is when it's in a 3G-only, or worse, fringe LTE area where it flips back and forth. If I neglect to disable LTE when I'm in a 3G only area it will completely drain the battery in a matter of hours. I presume that's the phone trying to find an LTE signal over and over, rather than backing off when it can't locate one. Of course, the flipside to that is it almost instantly picks up LTE when I enter a coverage area.

trparky
Premium Member
join:2000-05-24
Cleveland, OH
·AT&T U-Verse

trparky

Premium Member

said by Crookshanks:

The real battery hog with this phone is when it's in a 3G-only, or worse, fringe LTE area where it flips back and forth. If I neglect to disable LTE when I'm in a 3G only area it will completely drain the battery in a matter of hours.

That must be my problem. My Galaxy Nexus phone can drain the battery in no time at all on 4G LTE. I can watch the percentage drop by a digit every five minutes on LTE. Must be because I live in a "marginal signal area" according to Verizon.
Crookshanks
join:2008-02-04
Binghamton, NY

Crookshanks

Member

Disable LTE and let it idle on 3G. Not much else you can do about it. They don't promise coverage everywhere, at least they're being upfront with you about your particular location.

You can find used Network Extenders on eBay for <$100. That's what I did to deal with the black hole (no carrier has coverage) called my hometown. It sucks, but we're in the middle of a valley shaped like a soup bowl, alongside about a dozen other households, so it really wouldn't pay for any carrier to erect a tower just to cover us.

Also, check out the BetterBatteryStats app, specifically use it to look at partial wakelocks. It's entirely possible that you have apps running in the background that are killing your battery. I found a few that were hurting me, most I could keep by tweaking settings, but I uninstalled a few that couldn't be fixed.