Phone radio battery drain is high although you have excellent coverage ? Here is why

[Basement Warrior]

My S8 plus had terrible battery life compared to the reviews . I get an average of 3-5 hours of SOT

i opened the stock android battery monitor and couldn't see what was eating up My battery so i downloaded the gsam monitor and found out that the phone radio was totaling a 60-70% of my consumption even exceeding my screen power consumption.

But i had excellent coverage(always full bars and -70 to -60 dbms)why would my phone radio consumption be that high ??

And my phone could last up to 11 hours of screen on time with continuous wifi websurfing with no mobile data usage so i know it isnt defective

Well i decided to do some research and testing.

In my country the cellphone network companies signed a national roaming agreement in an attempt to allow better coverage , which basically means that i can connect to any tower in my country even if its not the one that belongs to my provider. Which makes my phone always looking for the tower that has a stronger signal and switching to it.
I then decided to put that theory to the test and downloaded an app that lets me see the towers i am connected to

Check out the madness
https://youtu.be/n1VEjeskadU

3 towers in an area of less than 300 meters raduis and my phone keeps switching up between them .

So no matter what i do i will get the battery life of a roaming device

 

[TheyCallMeBT]

Is there no option to turn off the roaming?

I didn't know about that app. I'd love to see where my closest cell tower is because I bounce from 4G to 3G to 1x. But I checked the reviews and I'm not sure I want to install that one you're using.

 

[Basement Warrior]

I dont think it could be turned off as its how the network is configured. Although my network provider has its own towers all over my country so does other network providers and since this national roaming agreement is in place its out of my hands . The phone will constantly search and connect with the tower with the strongest signal as you can see in the video sacrificing battery for unnoticeable and unneeded signal strength .
As for The app permisions is under ur control and u can still not approve and use the app

 

[anon(9918034)]

On the my sprint s8+ there is settings to turn roaming off.

 

[Almeuit]

Yeah not sure how things are over there but phones here really want their home network versus roaming so I can see how it hops a ton.

 

[mlblack16]

On the older phones running WinMo you could install a registry editor and make your phone do all sorts of things. Between registry edits and MSL and dialer menus, one could make his/her phone do all sorts of things phone carriers did not like

 

[Basement Warrior]

This is the agreement i am telling u about
I guess the uk government wanted to do something similar in 2011 but the leading mobile network providers did disclose alot of concerns to the public with user battery life highlighted as one of the main disadvantages

 

[Basement Warrior]

So today i activated tge 4g service on my sim card as the national roaming doesnt work on 4g . And to have 4g u have to be connected to your providers tower only ... and guess what ??????

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That SOT was continuous surfing using 4g and 20 mins of youtube using wifi and a mere 15 mins of playing fallout shelter

This is astonishing for me

 

[jeffmd]

Keep in mind that the roaming is not "dumb", there is a good chance the roaming agreement still requires a surcharge on the benefiting carrier, thus it is in the best interest of the carrier and its phones to be on its own towers at all times. Instead what you may be seeing is you are getting a great signal from a roaming tower but your phone is maxing out it's antenna power in attempt to find a suitable signal from its OWN towers.

 

[Basement Warrior]

Well its definitely doing something off when on 2g/3g bevause i have full bars but i get less than half of my current battery life with 4g that gives me 2-3 bars