Battery life based on cell signal

**balaz** · 09-11-2010, 10:47 AM

I've searched abroad but my question has too many keywords that are common for other issues, so I finally have submitted to opening a thread:

My house has awful 3G/1X cell signal at times and while I haven't concluded my research, I can all but be certain this is why I have awful battery life. (I'm on FRG01B rooted running CM6 on FRG22D). Battery life has been an issue before the house, but like I said I am still doing the research.

Most importantly, my question is whether or not there is an app (or something like it) which can automatically switch my phone from data to wifi when I get home. In other words, based on my location, the phone would know to switch over to wife and thus hopefully save my battery life.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks!

**Menno** · 09-11-2010, 01:29 PM

One thing you should do is install a custom Low Voltage (or ultra low voltage) Kernal. I use ChevyNo1 (Ultra low voltage, 1ghz max speed) kernals on mine.

Your signal strength is the issue. How CDMA works is if it has poor signal (or no signal) it will Constantly try and find a better connection, which kills your battery. This seems even more noticable after the 2.2 update with the stock kernal.

What I do is I just toggle wifi on when I am at home, and off in the morning. This allows me to do data over wifi when I'm at home (and seriously saves on battery) and if I forget about it, there is a "secure" wifi network near work that annoys my notification panel if I don't turn wifi off before I get there.

As for something that does it automatically, the only App I know of is one called Locale, which should be able to turn your wifi on and off depending on your GPS location. I have no experience with this though.

**randy_m** · 09-11-2010, 02:10 PM

There is an app called Phone Weaver that can do location based profiles (e.g. Turn on wifi, etc). It can also do a lot of other things.

**CallerHoller** · 09-11-2010, 02:27 PM

I live in a horrible dead zone. If I didn't charge overnight id wake to a dead Droid. One improvement I made was a network extentor. A little pricey at $250 though. I also downloaded Auto Airplane mode from the market. I set it for airplane mode from 11pm til 4:45am. Doesn't die anymore.

**rjf111** · 09-12-2010, 11:53 PM

Originally Posted by balaz

...my question is whether or not there is an app (or something like it) which can automatically switch my phone from data to wifi when I get home...

My Milestone does that automatically without an app. I leave the Wifi setting on, and whenever the phone gets in range of a signal that I have previously configured it for, it automatically switches over (you have to manually connect the first time -- after that it remembers the connection).