Excessive Battery Drain (Even On Standby)

[pre]

It appears that the Optimus V suffers from the same GSM/CDMA auto prl cell standby bug that affects the Evo's battery life.

To check if this bug is affecting your phone, go to AboutPhone -> BatteryUse -> CellStandby and check to if there is an entry for "Time without a signal". If your phone has a solid signal to Virgin Mobile at all times, it will read 50 percent.

To fix the issue, dial *#*#4636#*#* and it will load the testing screen. You do not have to press call. Select phone information.

My understanding of the bug is that even though the preferred network is set to "CDMA auto (PRL)", it is actually set to "GSM/CDMA auto (PRL)" because of a display bug.

The fix is to press Menu and then "Select radio band". The process will then force close. Go back to Phone info and select "CDMA only" and then select "CDMA auto (PRL)".

To verify that this fixes the issue, charge your phone to reset the battery statistics. Unplug the charger and check back in an hour or so. It should no longer say time without a signal (assuming you are in an area with a strong signal strength). This should cut the cell standby battery usage in half. The fix is not permanent. If you reboot the phone, you will have to make the changes in the testing screen again.

Some folks over at HowardForums recommended the 'network' app:
Network - Android app on AppBrain

This may be a bit cleaner than entering *#*#4636#*#*

 

[darrenb1988]

Wow mine force closes on me when I try to enter Select radio band. I guess I am screwed.

 

[Bigtuna00]

Wow mine force closes on me when I try to enter Select radio band. I guess I am screwed.

Read the steps again (this is supposed to happen).

 

[BiafraRepublic]

I tried this, but I immediately got knocked down to 2G 1xRTT so I switched back.

Sent from my VM670 using Tapatalk

 

[Micky5298]

Just figured I throw this out there. Enabling airplane mode for about 15 seconds seems to have the same effect. Much easier then going into any settings. Try it and report back please.

Sent from my VM670 using Tapatalk

 

[jmel]

Some folks over at HowardForums recommended the 'network' app:
Network - Android app on AppBrain

This may be a bit cleaner than entering *#*#4636#*#*

After trying this, I noticed that the number now is decreasing from 50%... after a few minutes it was like 45%.

What gives? Is this something that can be permanently fixed?

EDIT: This works for me so far

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=938677

 

[TekOne]

Checking on Cell Standby shows 35% on cell radio used last 6hr after a full 100% charged.

 

[Irkillcactuar]

I was reading that setting to CDMA only would prevent roaming. Given that virgin does not allow roaming (or at least so I heard) would it be better to keep it set to CDMA Only over auto?

 

[jmel]

I would not recommend cdma only, as this puts the phone into 1x... auto switches between evdo and 1x, and evdo only would use evdo only...

1x WILL save battery, but will also slow bandwidth to a fraction of evdo. Latency will also be 4x that of evdo as well.

 

[Bigtuna00]

I tried this, but I immediately got knocked down to 2G 1xRTT so I switched back.

You probably left it on "CDMA Only". Note the steps say:

"Go back to Phone info and select "CDMA only" and then select "CDMA auto (PRL)"."

In other words you toggle it, don't leave it on "CDMA Only".

 

[JedC]

Even after changing the radio band, and doing the airplane mode method, my battery still sucks. The time without signal does drop, but the cell standby is still using 50-60% of the battery and I still can't get it to last a full day. It's been like this for days now. I'm using Xeonia 005 and a custom ROM.

 

[LeslieAnn]

Some folks over at HowardForums recommended the 'network' app:
Network - Android app on AppBrain

This may be a bit cleaner than entering *#*#4636#*#*

Using that caused me all sorts of grief.
As long as it's installed (or it's settings, which was my problem), every time you lose the 3g signal your phone will lose data.

 

[deebee]

my batt was lasting about 6-8 hrs with GPS, wifi, sync turned off ..i live in a area where i get a weak signal -97 to -106 ..

i did the change radio bands etc.. didn't notice a difference.

i then turned off 3g and what a difference... came off the charger last sat at 8am PST... still have 57% batt remaining monday 9pm PST... now i only turn on 3g, gps, wifi, sync , blutooth when i need them ..
i send about 20 text , check email 2-3 times , send maybe 3-4 emails , little web seach 15-20 min , use blutooth about 15 min, maybe 5-7min phone talk = a day ..

 

[Bigtuna00]

I suppose this can become the battery tips thread?

Another culprit is the Yelp app. I installed it and my battery went from 20-30 hours down to 8 hours. Uninstalled it and everything is back to normal.

 

[millas]

ill give this fix a try cuz last nite i noticed it was at 70% usage in cell standby ill post back with results later

 

[JedC]

As a follow up to my last post, I saw what the drain would be overnight. I had already applied the radio band fix, the airplane mode fix, killed all unnecessary apps, turned off Wifi/Bluetooth/GPS/Sync and it was discharging from 100%

I woke up about 7 hours later and it was down to 69% after literally zero usage. Cell Standby was 47% (2% time without signal. I live in an area where I get 2-4 bars), Phone Idle was 45%. As I mentioned before I have the phone rooted and installed the Xionia 005 kernel with a custom ROM. I have the phone underclocked when idle. I did not use Juice Defender or any other battery saving type app, just to see.

Do I just have a really terrible battery or is there something up with the signal? I don't live in a 3G area (rural middle of nowhere), but when 3G is on I get about 150KB/s down and 70KB/s up. When I drop it to 1x it is considerably slower and I'd rather not have to do that all the time or keep switching it back and forth.

 

[eggFuJON]

It's not the battery. It's the rom, I suppose. I experience the same exact thing. On Stock+Xionia 2.2 rom battery is great. When I sleep for about 7 hrs it only lost about 6%.
aospCMod 2.3 rom has the most battery drain. It seems to be the snappiest of all the roms I use but the battery drain has deterred me. However, his new build update March 1 I still have to test.
Zefie's CM7 rom I have been using. Sometimes laggy coming out of sleep. But battery life is on par with Stock+Xionia.

Both Zefie and aosp have updated their roms so I will test them both.
But my time without a signal is 0% with the airplane mode fix, no setcpu (I have 245-600 interactive), ATK, and no battery saving apps.

 

[JedC]

Well, I had the same battery issue with the stock ROM, and I'm currently using the one in this thread: http://forum.androidcentral.com/optimus-v/58893-rom-stock-virgin-mobile-xionia-kernel-beta-2-a.html

One odd thing I noticed today was that for a while, the 3G indicator on top had the arrows blinking with relative frequency, but I had no apps running that should've been using the connection at all. It was going like that non-stop for a good few minutes, and for the heck of it I connected to my Wi-fi network for a moment, turned Wi-fi off a few seconds later, and it seems to have stopped doing that.

I don't have any apps or widgets running that would need to constantly use data like that, so I don't know A) Why it was doing that to begin with or B) Why enabling/disabling Wi-fi seemed to fix it.

 

[travisbickle]

Down to 69 % from fully charged is really flakey. If you have wifi in your house though I'd try leaving wifi on and see what you get... Leaving mine on overnight with wifi on it only drops to 94-93 percent. That is with Sync on, same rom as you, underclocking on screen off, phone on with radio band fix applied. Most likely you just have bad signal and it burns battery keeping the low signal maintained.

 

[jmel]

... phone on with radio band fix applied....

What do you mean by this?