Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T) <- fix at post #10

[jaltman]

So, I have been afflicted by the cell standby battery drain issue. I was losing about 12% per hour with wifi turned on. With wifi off it dropped to about 3% per hour, quite respectable in my book. So, I decided to 'chat' with Samsung, viewing it as a necessary evil prior to demanding a new phone. They had me go to recovery to wipe the cache. (Vol up+Home+Power, release power on vibrate, release rest on menu)

What was interesting is that prior to giving me the menu it said "installing update". I had received no update notice nor did my version or baseband get altered. I wiped the cache and rebooted and it is now MUCH better.

I did it about 4:30 (now 8:10) and in the 3.5 hours with wifi on I have used about 12%. My total day so far is 13 hours and 45% remaining, but most of that was with wifi off. There is a captive portal at work, but it sucks and I rarely use it, so having wifi off at work has been no big deal. Tomorrow I will leave wifi on and see what happens on a whole day.

 

[Techno-guy]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

So, I have been afflicted by the cell standby battery drain issue. I was losing about 12% per hour with wifi turned on. With wifi off it dropped to about 3% per hour, quite respectable in my book. So, I decided to 'chat' with Samsung, viewing it as a necessary evil prior to demanding a new phone. They had me go to recovery to wipe the cache. (Vol up+Home+Power, release power on vibrate, release rest on menu)

What was interesting is that prior to giving me the menu it said "installing update". I had received no update notice nor did my version or baseband get altered. I wiped the cache and rebooted and it is now MUCH better.

I did it about 4:30 (now 8:10) and in the 3.5 hours with wifi on I have used about 12%. My total day so far is 13 hours and 45% remaining, but most of that was with wifi off. There is a captive portal at work, but it sucks and I rarely use it, so having wifi off at work has been no big deal. Tomorrow I will leave wifi on and see what happens on a whole day.

Definitely let us know! I actually did the same cache wipe on my own last week (trying to troubleshoot every solution I could possibly think of!) and got the same "installing update" notice. I was pretty excited when I saw that because I thought maybe my initial update got caught up somehow and this would solve it. My drain was never as bad as yours (but it is around 5% per hour in Standby on WiFi) but it ended up staying pretty consistent after my cache wipe - still 5% per hour.

That said, if yours holds, maybe I'll give it another try. Thanks for the update!

 

[chefmorry]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

Thanks for the suggestion. I too got the installing updates when booting into recovery mode before wiping the cache on my TMO edge.

I'm going to boot into recovery again just to see if it again claims to be installing an update.

While I was having major "cell standby" battery issues (it was using about 34% one day earlier this week), yesterday and today it's in the single digits. Only thing I did was disable voice over LTE before today.

My Only other battery concern is in GSam Battery Monitor, it says that my screen discharge while on is 48%, 44% while off. Not quite sure what this means..... Does it mean the screen is eating up my battery even while it's off? Confussed. If anyone has an explanation, that'd be great!

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[EMGSM]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

Thanks for the suggestion. I too got the installing updates when booting into recovery mode before wiping the cache on my TMO edge.

I'm going to boot into recovery again just to see if it again claims to be installing an update.

While I was having major "cell standby" battery issues (it was using about 34% one day earlier this week), yesterday and today it's in the single digits. Only thing I did was disable voice over LTE before today.

My Only other battery concern is in GSam Battery Monitor, it says that my screen discharge while on is 48%, 44% while off. Not quite sure what this means..... Does it mean the screen is eating up my battery even while it's off? Confussed. If anyone has an explanation, that'd be great!

Posted via the Android Central App

How do you disable voice over LTE?

 

[chefmorry]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

How do you disable voice over LTE?

From the Phone screen, hit More button. Settings.... Voice over LTE settings.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[EMGSM]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

From the Phone screen, hit More button. Settings.... Voice over LTE settings.

Posted via the Android Central App

Thank you.

 

[mobilehavoc]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

Confirmed on my AT&T Edge that just turning off Enhanced 4G services fixed the issue. Since doing that cell standby doesn't even show up on battery usage. Before it was over 20%

 

[Kyle Tate]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

From the Phone screen, hit More button. Settings.... Voice over LTE settings.

Posted via the Android Central App

On the AT&T version that I have, there is no such "Voice over LTE" setting that I can find under the phone or anywhere else. I've even done a search under the help. I started seeing that on these forums From T-Mobile users. Is this solely an issue for them, or does anybody else under an AT&T phone have the same issue? There were a few WiFi and mobile hotspot settings that I was not down with, like constantly searching for an AT&T hotspot, Or continuing to search for a WiFi connection which is a waste of battery. It doesn't seem to be that data is as much of an issue anymore and the AT&T network unless you're totally in a rural area covers just about 99%. I was just really interested in the tweaks to make the battery work as efficiently as possible but I could not find this setting even under more advanced tabs. Thanks again for your help anyone notices this.

 

[Kyle Tate]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

Confirmed on my AT&T Edge that just turning off Enhanced 4G services fixed the issue. Since doing that cell standby doesn't even show up on battery usage. Before it was over 20%

Again, doing a thorough search under settings, WiFi, and even advanced could not find anything related to "Enhanced 4G services"??? Both with the WiFi on and with the WiFi off. Do you mind helping you navigate?

 

[mobilehavoc]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

Settings. . Mobile networks. . mobile data .. enhanced 4g

 

[Kyle Tate]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

Settings. . Mobile networks. . mobile data .. enhanced 4g

Got it! By turning this off what does it really do if you're not running on WiFi? How much performance is affected by the "enhanced" part? Any clue thanks again!

 

[mobilehavoc]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

Just turns off Volte

 

[Almeuit]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

I did this on my normal S6 ... Figure it can't hurt .

 

[jaltman]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

Settings. . Mobile networks. . mobile data .. enhanced 4g

This is the fix, thank you. Makes me wonder why turning wifi off would also shut down the drain. Perhaps the bug is actually in the code where the voice processing calls the radios and turning off the wider bandwidth voice stops the calls out that keeps the radios awake.

 

[Kyle Tate]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

I have no idea where some of the battery issues are coming from. All I can say to begin with is that I wish everybody's experience with their phone was as great as mine was today. It is 9 PM and for the last 12 hours I have been logging into most of the apps that I use the most on my phone, I streamed 30 minutes of live video for STL FC and watched it in full screen, I talked on the phone for apparently an hour and a half, at least 9 to 12 apps were updated at some point, I took a few pictures and uploaded them, a half a dozen, I shot a thirty second video, I upgraded a few contacts and may be sent 20 text messages back and forth.

I showed off the edge streaming three times but for the most part that feature was left idle. Whatever help you all gave me, I currently have 56% of my battery left or nine hours according to the system. Granted I turn off most functions which I deem or feel or needless to say power. I was NOT in power saving mode, my brightness was probably in the 60% range for most of the day, I never use auto as it's always too dark, and when I was watching the video I kicked it all the way up. That's the only time when I could really noticed the battery go down a little. I feel 100% confident this charge would get me through tomorrow. Again I followed a lot of tweaks that were recommended on here which I so appreciate, but I find absolutely no drain on the battery and I find it equal to the S4, the S5, if not better.

Again, I wish I were one and the same love of their phone as I experienced today! It is by far the best, most beautiful phone I have ever used. I don't know if the $100 is worth the edge, hopefully down the road there will be more functionality, but it worked like a charm and I hope that there is way more to come. To be honest with you the only thing that I kind of got frustrated with was every time I went to the settings it would start at the very first list or quick settings in a column of about eight items. So I had to swipe over if I wanted to check battery or applications. And my quick settings don't look like most peoples, they all look like the S5. I haven't quite figured that part out yet on how to set the features I want to use the most. But most of the day even my location was set on and using the S4 that would have cost drain like crazy, we'll see.

 

[naeem5oh]

Multiple attempts to go into recovery mode on my edge and it won't work?

Posted via the Android Central App on s6 edge

 

[orangemartini]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

Confirmed on my AT&T Edge that just turning off Enhanced 4G services fixed the issue. Since doing that cell standby doesn't even show up on battery usage. Before it was over 20%

where the heck is "enhanced 4g services" in settings?

 

[orangemartini]

Re: Possible 'cell standby' battery drain solution (AT&T)

Settings. . Mobile networks. . mobile data .. enhanced 4g

Oh, sorry, didn't see this. Um, must be an AT&T thing because it's not here on my tmobile device

 

[Siendorf]

I'm on verizon with s6 edge and my cell standby is out of this world. Needs to b fixed. I have data cap so hope it's not WiFi issue.

Posted via AC app on my S6 Edge

 

[turb0wned]

Guys just disable the amazon app that came preloaded with the phone. That will fix your battery issues.