Wifi Calling - Band 12 - Battery Life - and Disneyland

[Shadnic]

My first full day with the phone was at Disneyland. If you've not taken a cell phone to Disneyland, then let me tell you, it's a cell phone graveyard. Tens of thousands of phones all fighting for bandwidth, going indoors and out, desperately searching for signal, constantly taking pictures, and refreshing instagram to see if your picture finally finished uploading.

I took my phone off the charger at 7am that day, and at like 6pm that night, it was just hitting 50%. I was flabbergasted. I had never, EVER seen such good battery life. And this was a new phone, I had been pulling it out and playing with it all day. Getting home around 1:30am, I was around 23%. I couldn't believe this phone. I was in love.

Fast forward a few days and I'm at home. Phone sitting on my desk next to my computer. Tmobile service is notoriously bad in my apt, so I turn on wifi calling (on my old phone this would turn off the cell radio). However, on my 6P, it seems like it is still searching for and getting tmobile signal while on wifi w/wifi calling. I noticed the battery dropping MUCH faster. As in, 70%-5% over the course of 5 or 6 hours of very light use.

My question...would turning off the cell radio improve my battery life in this situation? Would it negatively impact my experience in any way (I had weird issues with wifi calling/texting on my old phone when the cell radio would automatically turn off)? And lastly, assuming band 12 isn't supported yet, could band 12 increase signal strength in my apt and therefore improve battery life?

 

[Slow_S10]

I can't speak to the 6P specifically since mine is riding around in a FedEx truck somewhere right now. But yes killing the cell radio should help dramatically. I work in an office with awful phone reception, and I don't have any choice but to keep my phone on a charger almost all day just to keep it going because the constantly hunting for a signal just murders the battery. If I had wifi available at work I would just turn off the cell radios and use that, but since I don't I have no choice but to let it hunt for service and keep throwing juice at it all day. Occasionally if I am going to be in meetings or training all day and won't have access to a charger I will leave it on airplane mode and only turn it off during breaks, and that seems to make enough of a difference to keep it alive for the day.

But I am eagerly awaiting band 12 because these are the exact issues that it is supposed to help fix. it is a slower LTE connection, but it has much better range and building penetration so once your phone connects to band 12, it shouldn't have to keep hunting for service.

And I just found out that T-Mobile is actively pursuing the band 12 licenses in my area so hopefully by the time they actually start rolling it out, the 6P will also be capable of utilizing it.

 

[shibumi]

Similar situation here. The first day or so with the 6P I was only using wifi - coming from an Nexus 5 I only had a mico sim not a nano. I was LOVING how the battery just wouldn't die just wouldn't die on the 6P!

THEN I went to TMo to pick up a nano sim, popped it in, went back home, didn't give it a second thought.. Until I picked my phone up a few hours later and notice the battery had dropped from a full charge to only 44% (roughly)!! Just from sitting on my desk!!

I tried several things suggested across the sites (turn wifi and bt scanning off, turn bt off, turn wifi off) - the problem was the phone was never going into Doze - staying awake constantly. Finally narrowed it down the sim and TMo signal issues.

Even more frustrating - as a test - I fully charged both my N5 and 6P. I took the sim out of the 6P and put it back into the N5 (via the lil sim template thing) and just left both sitting on my desk for 3 hours today. I turned wifi and bt OFF on the N5 and I turned them back ON (along with location scanning) on the 6P - just to replicate scenarios. The 6P was showing 100% on the battery after 3 hours!! (Hurray!! ??) - and the frustrating part - the N5 had only dipped about 4%!

Soooooooo - WHY is a (presumably) weak TMo signal NOT killing my N5, but it's destroying my 6P??

Is this going to be an antennae issue on the 6P? Could the N5 really have that much better of a radio/antennae in it that the battery doesn't drain at the same alarming rate?

The ONLY thing that changed was having a sim card in the 6P or not.

I'm about 2 hours into the second part of this little experiment (putting the sim back into the 6P), and I can tell you that the 6P is warm to the touch again now - just from sitting on my desk - which tells me something is keeping it "awake"... very frustrating!

 

[wrich2005]

I had something killing mine too. Not sure if it was a rogue app or a setting. I did a factory reset and its like a totally different phone. Might be worth a shot

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[sangs]

I had something killing mine too. Not sure if it was a rogue app or a setting. I did a factory reset and its like a totally different phone. Might be worth a shot

Posted via the Android Central App

After the factory reset, did you reinstall from a backup, or just completely start from scratch again?

 

[shibumi]

Yeah, I'm probably going about this all backwards. I probably should have just done the factory reset, but I was trying to narrow down the problem. Looks like a reset will be on my agenda for this afternoon, because nothing else I'm trying is really working!

 

[djmiked]

I have terrible reception at work. I put the phone in airplane mode and turn on wifi. I can make calls and text via wifi and battery life is great. When the phone is searching for service, it kills the battery as you already found out.

Posted via the Android Central App