Turbo Cell Standby uses about 30% of battery, why is that?

[Chinny570]

Hi, I love my droid turbo and the battery life is amazing, it could be better however. Going into my battery usage at any given time shows Cell Standby uses about 30% of the battery life. At the time of this writing it was my biggest consumer at 28%.
Screen-21%
Android System-8%
Support & Protection-8%
Android OS-8%
Phone Idle-6%
...and so on and so forth.
At my home the service is a bit spotty so it switches between 3g and 4g but time without a signal is at 0. My brother has an LG G3 so whatever cell tower issues we have at home should be the same. His battery usage is similar to mine except Cell Standby is only at about 2-3% at any given time. All of our settings are similar, we use wifi as much as we can, and both have Verizon and use their Global/LTE/CDMA network.
Is their anything I am doing wrong that uses so much Cell Standby?
ps I have location completely turned off. I have noticed on the G3 that his phone will be using 3g in some areas where i have 4g, Idk if that is related but i believe the turbo antenna is better.

 

[jerrykur]

At my home the service is a bit spotty so it switches between 3g and 4g but time without a signal is at 0..

There is part of your problem. Every time it switches it costs cycles and battery life.

The other part of the question is why does one phone handle this better than the other. From what I have seen the radio in the Droid Turbo is good, but there are better. Also it is tuned to hold LTE at all costs. The MobileTech review on YouTube of the Droid Turbo goes into both the radio performance and the LTE bias. The radio shows about 7-10 db less signal than the phone they compared it to (I think it was a Sony). The combination of a weaker radio performance and the LTE bias means that the phone loses LTE signal more often and more aggressively switches back to LTE when it detects even a very weak LTE signal.

BTW, has this problem caused your phone to have poor overall battery life? I find there is so much battery in my Droid Turbo that things like flaky BT devices and such that used to drain my other phones have minimal overall impact on how much charge I have at the end of the day.

 

[Chinny570]

Ah ok that makes sense. Like I said the battery life is still very impressive. I just figured if I can get my main consumer of battery from the 30% i see now down to the 2-3% the G3 has then I extend my battery life by about 25% essentially.

 

[rigg]

Settings/More/Mobile Networks/Preferred network type - change it to LTE/CDMA

I'm not an expert, I've just seen this mentioned in several battery saving threads.

 

[Chinny570]

Ok I changed to lte/CDMA from global and it seems to have helped. Down to about 20-22% from the 30% before.

 

[doogald]

Ok I changed to lte/CDMA from global and it seems to have helped. Down to about 20-22% from the 30% before.

It sounds like it's truly an issue that you are often in an area with bad cell coverage. You can tell for sure by going to settings / battery usage and tap the graph - it shows a bar graph of mobile signal, among other graphs. If you see a lot of red, you have had a lot of bad signal, which forces the phone to put more power to the antenna (and makes a phone set to "global" switch the GSM radio on occasionally as well, perhaps.)

 

[KPMcClave]

There is part of your problem. Every time it switches it costs cycles and battery life.

The other part of the question is why does one phone handle this better than the other. From what I have seen the radio in the Droid Turbo is good, but there are better. Also it is tuned to hold LTE at all costs. The MobileTech review on YouTube of the Droid Turbo goes into both the radio performance and the LTE bias. The radio shows about 7-10 db less signal than the phone they compared it to (I think it was a Sony). The combination of a weaker radio performance and the LTE bias means that the phone loses LTE signal more often and more aggressively switches back to LTE when it detects even a very weak LTE signal.

BTW, has this problem caused your phone to have poor overall battery life? I find there is so much battery in my Droid Turbo that things like flaky BT devices and such that used to drain my other phones have minimal overall impact on how much charge I have at the end of the day.

Thanks for this info. I noticed right away 3 months ago that my Cell Standby was using more than it had (proportionally) on my prior Droid Maxx. Answers to the question on the various online forums mentioned your first reason (which doesn't apply, since I'm in the same places as I was with my prior phone), but never your second. So, thanks for that explanation and the new (to me) info.

Like the OP, I was more concerned with the optimal battery use than it being a huge issue that drained it down too fast. Overall I have felt that the bump from the Maxx to the Droid is mildly disappointing (I expected a bit better battery life than I get), but that's comparing it to the Maxx, a beast in its own right. Hoping Lollipop boosts it some more.

 

[KPMcClave]

Ok I changed to lte/CDMA from global and it seems to have helped. Down to about 20-22% from the 30% before.

Just by way of copmparison, mine was usually between 13-17% on a daily basis. I think it stayed below 10% most of the time on my Maxx.

This thread has brought the issue more to the forefront of my mind, as I haven't thought about it for a while. I just looked and my current Cell Standby use is only 11%. Could be an anomaly, or maybe something got tweaked when they did the last uypdate that included Advanced Calling 1.0 (which I have activated). I don't think I've noticed the Cell Standby consumption since that update.

 

[Murph5150]

Checking your "asu" will show cycling. If your phone doesn't display asu, there is a math calculation. Basic algebra.
The GSM calculation is dBm = 2 * asu - 113
Suppose dBm is -74.

-74 = 2 * asu - 113
39 = 2asu
19.5 = asu

UMTS is dBm = asu - 116

LTE (asu - 141) </= dBm < (asu - 140)
That gives a range, not a conclusive answer.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Chinny570]

Murph I have no idea what that means lol

 

[Dhawk1202]

Checking your "asu" will show cycling. If your phone doesn't display asu, there is a math calculation. Basic algebra.
The GSM calculation is dBm = 2 * asu - 113
Suppose dBm is -74.

-74 = 2 * asu - 113
39 = 2asu
19.5 = asu

UMTS is dBm = asu - 116

LTE (asu - 141) </= dBm < (asu - 140)
That gives a range, not a conclusive answer.

Posted via the Android Central App

OH yeah... Totally... I see that now. Explains everything.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Denis Runev]

I thought I'm the only one who suffer from that.
In my opinion it was because of not native LTE bands or something.
Cell standby is the second largest energy consumer after display. Besides I have "time without a signal" around 40% ! But the graph shows "green" cell strength all the way, weird.
The problem is massive in russia area for Droids Turbo, people used to switch LTE off, it actually helps.
After I switched LTE off (just for test) mine "cell standby" rolled to the end of the list, and become like 2-3%.
Well, actually 3g+ is pretty enough for everything, but what the hell, I was purchsing LTE cell =)

PS sorry for thick russian accent =)

 

[dougdraws]

My cell standby is using 44%. I changed it to LTE/CDMA, but it's still using quite a bit. Any suggestions?

 

[doogald]

Percentages themselves mean nothing. If you're not using your phone for anything else, the battery is consumed by something, so that will be the cellular radio in many cases.

But if you are frequently in a place with poor cell reception, about the only thing you can do is to turn off mobile data until you get somewhere with better reception. There is nothing you can do to make reception better.

If you really want me the percentage lower you can do something else with your phone, like listen to music or navigate or play a game. But that will make your battery life worse, not better.