Cell standby battery usage

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stingray454

Member
Apr 23, 2014
25
4
I'm experimenting a bit to see if the Omate TS would be a usable replacement for a phone (ie if it would work well during the day to read notifications, use for sports tracking, recieve calls and such).

It started out well - when I took the watch off charging in the morning I activated the phone, WiFi, bluetooth and paired my bt headset, and turned off cell data. I played around with the phone a bit (installed an app, played with that for a few minutes, checked settings and tried some new things there for maybe 10 minutes or so, and so on). I recieved two calls that lasted about 5 minutes each, and checked mails, facebook and such a few times. After lunch the battery showed 78% remaining, which sounded very good.

I decided to take a walk, so I turned off WiFi, enabled cellular data, and turned on GPS. Listened to podcasts through BT headset for the entire walk. One hour walk with RunKeeper, where I checked mail and facebook a few times during the walk.

After returning, the battery was down a lot, to about 25%, ie 50% battery drained in one hour. I checked the battery stats, and it looked like this: (not a link as I can't post links yet due to forum restrictions): imgur.com/WPQJNd4

I'm not surprised about WiFi and BT consumption as I had those enabled and used them quite a lot during the day, but what surprised me is the cell standby adding up to almost 50% of the battery usage, most of which seemed to be drained when I enabled cell data. Is GPS drain included in cell standby as well? Is this to be expected, or what's causing the excessive drain when using cell data connection? Any tips on how to improve this?

My cell coverage during the walk was decent, as I was outdoors and had at least 3-4 bars of reception the entire time.
 

aeron16

Senior Member
Jan 16, 2006
346
30
cell standby is also the highest drain on mine. was on 2g only as well

Sent from my C6903 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
 

speedyink

Senior Member
Sep 10, 2010
1,479
373
Mine usually says that too. Although it still easily lasts me the day with the cell on.
 

sethxp

Senior Member
Sep 6, 2005
65
5
www.seth.cz
8 calls, some messages, BT always on with headset, on 2G GSM, light app usage with brightness on min and i ended on 4th day still with 40%battery left.
 

stingray454

Member
Apr 23, 2014
25
4
8 calls, some messages, BT always on with headset, on 2G GSM, light app usage with brightness on min and i ended on 4th day still with 40%battery left.

That's quite impressive!

I tried again today, took watch of charger when leaving for work. 1 call, 10-15 minutes of "play" (installed an app, changed some settings, re-arranged some icons and such). BT with headset, WiFi and phone enabled all day, mobile data connection off. Recieved quite a few notifications during the day that I checked briefly, but other than that quite idle. When leaving the office at the end of the day I had 52% battery remaining.

Not too bad, but out of that the cell standby and phone idle together consumed half of my battery. Reception is ok, ranging from 2 bars to full (goes a bit up and down). I can't complain about the wifi / bt / screen battery drain, seems the phone standby is the only major battery hog for me.
 
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fg

Senior Member
Aug 3, 2006
123
27
8 calls, some messages, BT always on with headset, on 2G GSM, light app usage with brightness on min and i ended on 4th day still with 40%battery left.

That's amazing, what is your setup (hw revision, firmware, settings, etc)?

Disabling cell, wifi, bt, gps, lowest brightness on modified stock (the 2014 testing as a base, ensec, xposed) and I can just make it barely back home on 2nd day with light usage (check the time mostly).

In comparison, my Pebble gets to 30-40% on the 4th day and will die out completely by the 6th day.
 

stingray454

Member
Apr 23, 2014
25
4
Even though the cell standby seems to drain a ton of battery, overall it's acceptable. For normal usage (WiFi on, BT on, paired with headset, phone on, a few widgets and apps that are pulling info from the web, receiving a couple of notifications per hour, checking time/notifications a few times, making a few calls and such) I seem to average about 6-8% per hour. Half of that is for the cell standby, so turning the phone off would probably double my battery life.

I know there are a number of "battery saving apps" out there that modify settings and behavior to save power. Mostly stuff like turn wifi off when screen is off, enabling it once every few minutes to check notifications, and similar. Anyone know if these apps can tune the phone power consumption in any way?
 

fg

Senior Member
Aug 3, 2006
123
27
Even though the cell standby seems to drain a ton of battery, overall it's acceptable. For normal usage (WiFi on, BT on, paired with headset, phone on, a few widgets and apps that are pulling info from the web, receiving a couple of notifications per hour, checking time/notifications a few times, making a few calls and such) I seem to average about 6-8% per hour. Half of that is for the cell standby, so turning the phone off would probably double my battery life.

I know there are a number of "battery saving apps" out there that modify settings and behavior to save power. Mostly stuff like turn wifi off when screen is off, enabling it once every few minutes to check notifications, and similar. Anyone know if these apps can tune the phone power consumption in any way?

I started running Deep Sleep Battery Saver as I had prior experience with it working well on an SII as a set it and forget application, where other similar programs require much more customisation. keep in mind my omate is not a daily driver, it spends half the week on the charger and the other half on my wrist, and I only use a sim card in their sparingly. as such, I don't have proper data, but I've definitely been able to make it through the day with light usage, occasionally forgetting to recharge until the next day

I think there may be something wrong with either the battery or the circuitry which monitors and reports on the status. I can watch an hour long video with negligable 4% battery loss one day, and another day a similar video draining over 20%.
 

death_entry

Senior Member
Nov 23, 2006
308
29
London
Certainly with all the radios switched off and very light usage my TS was on 92% well into it's 2nd day...
However soon as you use it... it gets murdered.... lol....
 

sethxp

Senior Member
Sep 6, 2005
65
5
www.seth.cz
From wednesday till now, few calls, bluetooth on, some texts, very light usage.
 

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fg

Senior Member
Aug 3, 2006
123
27
From wednesday till now, few calls, bluetooth on, some texts, very light usage.

Still amazing! Which model hardware do you have? what rom? are you running any additional apps or just what's default? I'd love to replicate your setup on my 1/8 1900

--fg
 

sethxp

Senior Member
Sep 6, 2005
65
5
www.seth.cz
Truesmart, EU 512-4 2100 working sensors firmware with patch, removed some bloatware, all auto sync off (manual), switched to 2G gsm only, brightness to min, bluetooth always on because crappy mic. Additional apps:facebook, my budget book, hangouts, es file, airdroid, quikpic, teamviewer...
 
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    From wednesday till now, few calls, bluetooth on, some texts, very light usage.