A topic that comes up in battery-related threads a lot is signal strength... you'll see a lot of people say that having a poor (or zero) signal can have a rather substantial negative impact on your battery performance. If you don't know exactly why, read on....
First, DON'T TRUST THE ICON ON YOUR STATUS BAR! Your mobile radio signal has two main components; signal strength (how powerful a signal you detect from the local tower) and signal-to-noise ratio/SNR (how clean that signal is). Both are critical and in many cases, the SNR is often MORE important. Most understand signal strength, but SNR is not quite as well-understood. Signal-to-noise is the ratio of the actual signal to noise. A relatively weak signal that has a high signal to noise ratio might actually be a better signal that a crazy strong, but noisy one This is because the amplifiers in your phone's radio have to crank up the ol' power to compensate for all the fuzz in the line.
I checked around and I think neither LG nor Samsung factor in SNR in those little signal bars you see in your status bar. I know that comparing my Nexus 6 and my wife's LG G4, using a signal monitoring tool, we'll both show similar power and SNR... but on signals with poor SNRs, her phone seems to ignore that and just post the little icon based on the strength while my Nexus factors in both. You may need to install an app like LTE Discovery or Signal Check to get those more detailed readings.
The following is a screenshot from GSAM, a popular battery monitoring tool, showing how much the power usage varies from poor to good signals. (Please note that the following stats are only available to those who are rooted and can install the GSAM Battery Companion)
You can clearly see the progression of power use based on the signal quality. A poor signal can draw 600% more power than a strong one. And that poor signal can act like a power vampire, eating away your charge, as much as 1% - or more - an hour, just sitting there on your table. That might not seem all that much, but over the course of the day, you can lose 25%+ of your batteries charge as your phone has to huff and puff to maintain its connection.
I have T-Mobile and up until this summer (props to T-Mobile for their network upgrades in my area), the signal at my house was a pretty weak. And WiFi Calling helped little since with the Nexus 6, the phone radio is still kept up to allow for fast handoff (on my older G3, LG disabled the phone radio when connected to WFC). So I was seeing a constant draw that I could only eliminate by toggling airplane mode and keeping my WiFi radio up and running. Not the most ideal solution. T-Mobile did send out an LTE booster and this had an immediate impact.
So if you are running into battery problems... check those signals!
First, DON'T TRUST THE ICON ON YOUR STATUS BAR! Your mobile radio signal has two main components; signal strength (how powerful a signal you detect from the local tower) and signal-to-noise ratio/SNR (how clean that signal is). Both are critical and in many cases, the SNR is often MORE important. Most understand signal strength, but SNR is not quite as well-understood. Signal-to-noise is the ratio of the actual signal to noise. A relatively weak signal that has a high signal to noise ratio might actually be a better signal that a crazy strong, but noisy one This is because the amplifiers in your phone's radio have to crank up the ol' power to compensate for all the fuzz in the line.
I checked around and I think neither LG nor Samsung factor in SNR in those little signal bars you see in your status bar. I know that comparing my Nexus 6 and my wife's LG G4, using a signal monitoring tool, we'll both show similar power and SNR... but on signals with poor SNRs, her phone seems to ignore that and just post the little icon based on the strength while my Nexus factors in both. You may need to install an app like LTE Discovery or Signal Check to get those more detailed readings.
The following is a screenshot from GSAM, a popular battery monitoring tool, showing how much the power usage varies from poor to good signals. (Please note that the following stats are only available to those who are rooted and can install the GSAM Battery Companion)
You can clearly see the progression of power use based on the signal quality. A poor signal can draw 600% more power than a strong one. And that poor signal can act like a power vampire, eating away your charge, as much as 1% - or more - an hour, just sitting there on your table. That might not seem all that much, but over the course of the day, you can lose 25%+ of your batteries charge as your phone has to huff and puff to maintain its connection.
I have T-Mobile and up until this summer (props to T-Mobile for their network upgrades in my area), the signal at my house was a pretty weak. And WiFi Calling helped little since with the Nexus 6, the phone radio is still kept up to allow for fast handoff (on my older G3, LG disabled the phone radio when connected to WFC). So I was seeing a constant draw that I could only eliminate by toggling airplane mode and keeping my WiFi radio up and running. Not the most ideal solution. T-Mobile did send out an LTE booster and this had an immediate impact.
So if you are running into battery problems... check those signals!
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