New Tbolt owner here: 3G or 4G?

[johnriii]

So, going into my 4th week as a Tbolt owner, I have a couple of questions (no, NOT about rooting, yet). With the stock battery, I?m getting about 12-13 hours before I?m hitting the 20% mark. Granted, I have access to charging 80% of the day, but I?ve forced myself not to use it on purpose, just to see how much I can squeeze out of this alleged battery guzzler. Also, I am using juice defender, which seems to work very well, outside of when you unlock the phone and have to wait for a data connection (10-15 seconds, max). the big question is regarding 3G vs 4G. I have heard two schools of thought on this: #1: if you live in 4G area, your battery won?t drain as much, because the signal is steady. #2 it doesn?t matter whether you live in a 4G area or not, 4G still eats your battery ravenously. Use 3G to conserve battery. Which one do I believe? Is there a solid, factual answer out there, or is it all just speculation and conjecture? I stay in 3G unless I need the extra speed (youtube, Netflix, surfing the web). Any opinions/help would be awesome.

 

[stirling]

I live in an area with good 4G signal, and I leave my phone in 4G all the time. Let's face it, we didn't buy these things to have to cripple features. I did however just recently pick up a 2750ma battery for $25.00 at Verizon (50% off all 4G accessories). I have to say since the extended battery, I don't care about juice in the least. I roll into midnight with 40 to 50% battery left, and I plug in. It's completely a non-issue now.

 

[jackmei2]

I live in an area with good 4G signal, and I leave my phone in 4G all the time. Let's face it, we didn't buy these things to have to cripple features. I did however just recently pick up a 2750ma battery for $25.00 at Verizon (50% off all 4G accessories). I have to say since the extended battery, I don't care about juice in the least. I roll into midnight with 40 to 50% battery left, and I plug in. It's completely a non-issue now.

+1 to this... except I bought the rezound battery, even before then I could get through an entire day without problems.

 

[defcon999]

I live in an area with good 4G signal, and I leave my phone in 4G all the time. Let's face it, we didn't buy these things to have to cripple features.

+1

I paid good money for a 4G phone, if I wanted to stay with 3G, I would have just kept my original droid.

I would set it to LTE only though (download LTE on/off). The battery drains stims from it being set to CDMA/LTE and it switching back and forth. If you live in a predominately 4G area (like I do in the Silicon Valley), then there is really no reason to switch to 3G.

If you don't do a lot of downloading or streaming of music or video, then 3G would work fine.

It is just nice to have the capability of going 3G/4G.

 

[johnriii]

I'm considering the rezound battery as well, but it's not like I'm down to 40% before lunch. I will experiment with 4G LTE only (i have the LTE on/off app) and see how much different it is. not really sure if KC has a STRONG 4G signal or not. I have occasionally dropped to 1x every now and a again, but 3G seems pretty steady.

 

[FrankXS]

4G all the way!

My advice is to not experiment with anything "only" -- let your phone decide by not limiting it. That's what it was designed to do. My guess is, with the current radios, your phone will do a better job of deciding than you will.

-Frank

 

[johnriii]

4G all the way!

My advice is to not experiment with anything "only" -- let your phone decide by not limiting it. That's what it was designed to do. My guess is, with the current radios, your phone will do a better job of deciding than you will.

-Frank

sounds sensible to me... Thx

 

[Jude526]

I do have mine set yo CDMA only. I don't live in a 4g area. Until it comes my way I do maintain the 3 g setting. It is very quick and responsive. I have never been at 1x
I am always at full 3g bars. I have tried the 4g and like it but toggling wouldn't be good for me.
Your best bet is to see what works for you. Anyway you look at you have the best phone out there!

Sent from my Thunderbolt using Tapatalk

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

Here's my take:

Some folks seem to get much better battery life on 3G vs. 4G. I am one of those folks. For others, it doesn't seem to make as much of a difference. My guess would be that the strength of the 4G signal does have a lot to do with that. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to know what the strength of your 4G signal is! (the signal bars DO NOT indicate 4G data signal strength). You may very well have to "experiment" when you're at home/work to see if dropping your phone down to 3G helps you get better battery life...that is if you're curious about it. Also, don't forget about wifi -- I find that to be the biggest battery saver of them all when I'm able to use it.

Having said that, I keep my phone set to 4G almost all the time. As others have said, we bought 4G phones for a reason, and it seems pointless to scale the sucker down than to utilize it to its fullest potential. Also, it's almost amazing how much better battery life I'm getting with the Rezound battery (FYI).

Now, if I'm going to be out and about all day and know I might be pushing the limits of my battery, then yes, I drop it down to 3G, but only then. For me, 3G easily adds several extra hours to my battery, at least as long as the 3G signal is good. (Hunting for a weak data signal will kill your battery no matter what setting you use!).

With the Rezound battery and my current setup, I can stay on 4G all day and usually get a good 16 hours at least out of my phone, plus on most days I do a mid-day charge while at work anyway...so there's no real need to worry about it at all...bring on the 4G!

 

[dragonsamus]

I leave mine on 4G all the time.

 

[bjboucher]

I'm like Paintdrinkingpete, I get MUCH better battery life if I set my phone to 3G only. I just turn on 4G when I need the extra boost in speed. I don't need 4G on all the time to get e-mail/facebook updates and whatever else. Its nice to have though when you do need to do some data intensive work! I think I live in a fairly weak 4G area, probably why my battery life is not so good when I leave it on 4G.

 

[Jude526]

Use what works best for you. I can't use 4g in my home area as I mentioned before. I work in a 4g area. Can't fully benefit from it at work. I am content with the 3g. Eventually Cave Creek will have 4g. I still love the phone.

Sent from my Thunderbolt using Tapatalk

 

[ALCingularUser]

There are a few other things you can do that will help you a great deal.

First, if wi-fi is available, use it. In fact, get registered on as many hotspots as you can in areas you frequent, and leave wi-fi turned on. You'll see a pretty dramatic improvement in battery life.

Next, disable syncing of anything you don't use. For instance, some of the HTC widgets are listed under Accounts & Sync, so they're fetching data, even if you don't use them. Disable those. Also go through all your apps and adjust when they refresh, setting it to the longest interval you can. For example, I set Facebook to never refresh. My thinking is that I can always open the app if I want to see what's going on.

And, if all else fails, get the extended battery. That made a tremendous difference for me.

 

[OmahaPlaya]

I've kept mine at LTE+CDMA and had battery drain like crazy till I adjusted to 4G only as I live and work in a 4G area. Also helps that I can charge my phone at work so I never let the battery get too low.

 

[johnriii]

I've kept mine at LTE+CDMA and had battery drain like crazy till I adjusted to 4G only as I live and work in a 4G area. Also helps that I can charge my phone at work so I never let the battery get too low.

my one day trial of 4G only didn't work out, due to the outage we experienced this morning. I'm still running it now to see if I can still get my 12 plus hours that I get with 3G and wifi....

 

[androidguy916]

I leave mine on 3G even though I'm in a good 4G area all the time. I recently got the Rezound battery (2, actually) and did some experiments with 3G vs 4G and found about a 10% to 15% difference. On the way to work I use the I Heart Radio app for about an hour, then again for an hour at lunch time and use Runkeeper running GPS for the entire hour while I walk and then another hour of I Heart Radio on the way home. By the end of the day (about 12 hours) I'm down to about 20% on 4G and 35% on 3G, give or take a few percentage points. For my purposes 3G works just fine for the I Heart Radio app and the very little web browsing and emailing I do during the day. When I want to watch videos I switch to 4G but it drains the battery pretty quickly.

Just my 2 cents worth and at that it's overpriced.

Bill