Just got the Ally today and as I was messing around with it I checked out the Time Without Signal under Settings > About Phone > Battery use > Phone idle.... I can't believe it! Or maybe I can, I don't know. Bummer.
when the first leaks of 2.1 for the eris showed up, a lot of users noticed that the battery was draining very quickly on their Eris. a quick check in the battery information screen showed that a process called Cell Standby was the culprit. In most cases the phone showed that it was without a signal 50% of the time. In some cases it was around 70-80. A quick trip into Airplane mode for a few minutes, followed by a reboot seemed to be a generally accepted workaround if you are experiencing this issue.
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when the first leaks of 2.1 for the eris showed up, a lot of users noticed that the battery was draining very quickly on their Eris. a quick check in the battery information screen showed that a process called Cell Standby was the culprit. In most cases the phone showed that it was without a signal 50% of the time. In some cases it was around 70-80. A quick trip into Airplane mode for a few minutes, followed by a reboot seemed to be a generally accepted workaround if you are experiencing this issue.
Is that work around generally good only until the next reboot?
I have this bug my phone says that it was without service for 89% of the time and the battery dies in like 5 hours.... Is there a permanent solution to this?
----putting the phone in airplane mode and restarting did not work... My phone is losing 1% of battery every 2min with ball bars.... Anybody have another solution????
Last edited by Vmanisme; June 19th, 2010 at 11:04 AM.
Reason: More info
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Check your applications, something is constantly going to drain it that fast. Applications like Sportstap come configured with a 1 minute update setting, your battery dies fast.
Check your applications, something is constantly going to drain it that fast. Applications like Sportstap come configured with a 1 minute update setting, your battery dies fast.
--Open dial pad and dial *#*#4636#*#* (If Testing menu doesn't come up than click "Call" and it will come up)>Go to Phone information>Scroll down and you'll see preferred network type>click it and switch it to GSM/CDMA auto (PRL)
That did not change anything after 6 hours. Tried 3 times with no result.
Turned the phone off and on...still no result.
Then I switched to 'Airplane' mode'.
Turned the phone off for 5 minutes.
Turned the phone on.
Checked Settings/Battery use/Cell standby.
Time without signal was 42% NOT 50%
Checked again at 1 hour intervals.
Time without signal 4 hours later was 18%(before going to bed for the night.
Left the phone on and NOT plugged into the charger. Battery level at that point was 80%.
When I got up the next morning the time without signal was 1% and the battery level was 78%
That is a dramatic change from before.
I've been watching the battery level all morning through normal use including 1 hour of Pandora radio, 15 minutes talk time and some texting. Although the battery level has gone done I do notice that if I'm not using anything on the phone the battery level barely changes.
I hope this helps.
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--Open dial pad and dial *#*#4636#*#* (If Testing menu doesn't come up than click "Call" and it will come up)>Go to Phone information>Scroll down and you'll see preferred network type>click it and switch it to GSM/CDMA auto (PRL)
That did not change anything after 6 hours. Tried 3 times with no result.
Turned the phone off and on...still no result.
Then I switched to 'Airplane' mode'.
Turned the phone off for 5 minutes.
Turned the phone on.
Checked Settings/Battery use/Cell standby.
Time without signal was 42% NOT 50%
Checked again at 1 hour intervals.
Time without signal 4 hours later was 18%(before going to bed for the night.
Left the phone on and NOT plugged into the charger. Battery level at that point was 80%.
When I got up the next morning the time without signal was 1% and the battery level was 78%
That is a dramatic change from before.
I've been watching the battery level all morning through normal use including 1 hour of Pandora radio, 15 minutes talk time and some texting. Although the battery level has gone done I do notice that if I'm not using anything on the phone the battery level barely changes.
I hope this helps.
I implemented this on my wife's Ally two nights ago. The results have been a dramatic 180.
The only thing I question is the long term use of this work around.
Having the phone in a CDMA/GSM mode when it doesn't have a GSM radio. Will this affect roaming at all?
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Re: Oh no! Ally has the dreaded 50% bug.... :(
I just got my Ally today. Noticed the 50% bug immediately after activating. Put it into airplane mode. 4 hours later battery has drained from 80% to 35%, phone was idle entire time sitting in my office where I get great reception. Time without signal says 97%. What gives?
I just got my Ally today. Noticed the 50% bug immediately after activating. Put it into airplane mode. 4 hours later battery has drained from 80% to 35%, phone was idle entire time sitting in my office where I get great reception. Time without signal says 97%. What gives?
Sent from my Ally using Tapatalk
Welcome! Congratulations on your bug hahah, try the fix I posted, seems to work for some people and others get away with airplane mode.
OK, so I'm not the only person that still has a problem even after the "settings fix" and the "airplane mode fix"?? I went to Verizon last night, but the guy had no idea what I was talking about. Cell standby is at 66% right now and I usually get about 4-5hrs of charge before it dies. Stinks too because i really like the Ally!
My Ally is at 96% without service!!! YIKES...I tried the airplane mode first as this fixed my eris..I even charged the Ally with airplane mode on..still reads 96% without service..Don't call me, my phone probably wouldn't ring if ya did!! ;-) Actually within minutes of the *#*#4636#*#* thing it has dropped to 66% and falling..we will see.
__________________ "Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't."
Richard Bach
Here's something I've tested each day for 2 weeks:
Follow in this order:
1. Set Airplane mode on
2. Power off for 3 minutes(approx)
3. Power back on
4. Set Airplane mode off
I have found that these steps, after installing Juice Defender (free version from the market) have yielded consistently better battery life.
Under my normal use ....2 hours of Pandora, 6-10 texts, some browser and a few calls I have usually 25-45% battery life when I get up in the morning after giving it a full charge each morning. It also eliminated the 50% bug whatever that really is.
Hope this helps.
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just tried this on my week-and-a-half old ally. normally at this time of day i'd be down to 50% bat life, and i'm still close to 75%. in a little over an hour, time without signal has dropped from 75% to 73%. will keep checking over the next couple of days.
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UPDATE: had to use airplane mode and juice defender as well, but battery life does seem to be improving. cell standby is being held under 50% most of the time.
My time without signal was 100%. I tried the test menu 'fix' about 5 hours ago and now my phone keeps freezing to the point where I have to take the battery out. I went back to the test menu and went back to the default and my phone still freezes. So I did a soft reset and still freezing just not as much. So now my time without signal is 84% and seems to be slowly declining but I'm not happy about it because my phone defective. Any suggestions?
My guess is that you changed something in the menu inadvertently. If you have appbrain and your contacts sync'd thru gmail, then I would try a factory reset. Makes loading everything back on there a bit more tolerable.
Sometimes these mini computers just get hung.... The 4636 trick worked for mine but only after a nice hard reset.... Then monitor ir after that.... I still needed to jump to airplane mode every now and then but it didnt burn the battery like the Devour that would get hung in camera mode in the background...
My time without signal was around 50% most of the time. A trip to the Verizon store, and they had no idea what I was talking about. Then I simply followed the airplane shut off mode above, and now I am down to 1%. Try it a few times and let it sit, it worked great for me!
new here, looked through my ally and saw that my phone was at 78%. did the gsm/cdma setting then a airplane mode shut down like you guys are describing on here. phone was fully charged at midnight and was off the charge over night, its at 97% now. the time without signal is 0% thanks guys
My phone has gone from 100% to 17%; much better...Now; however, it stays at about 50% so every now and then I put into airplane mode or charge in airplane mode. I am also interested in moving apps to sd card; my phone is getting 'phull' and 'phat' with apps.
I have the 96% or so on mine for time without signal... But I haven't really had a problem with battery life.. Then again I moved to the Ally from a Windows phone that had <8hrs standby time, so for me to make it a full day without recharging is pretty good. I used to leave my Windows phone on the charger all day at work because if I didn't it would be dead by the time I went home in the afternoon.
I also haven't noticed having a signal problem, I've gotten calls, used GPS, made calls etc, and e-mail sync and internet is working great. So what's this 96% without signal??
I have the 96% or so on mine for time without signal... But I haven't really had a problem with battery life.. Then again I moved to the Ally from a Windows phone that had <8hrs standby time, so for me to make it a full day without recharging is pretty good. I used to leave my Windows phone on the charger all day at work because if I didn't it would be dead by the time I went home in the afternoon.
I also haven't noticed having a signal problem, I've gotten calls, used GPS, made calls etc, and e-mail sync and internet is working great. So what's this 96% without signal??
The phone basically looks for service while it has service, so yes everything works but its still trying to find something that doesn't exist pretty much, and the Ally is suppose to go 2-3 days on heavy use if it wasn't for the bug.
The phone basically looks for service while it has service, so yes everything works but its still trying to find something that doesn't exist pretty much, and the Ally is suppose to go 2-3 days on heavy use if it wasn't for the bug.
That makes more sense now....I didn't exactly understand what was going on,and my Ally eats the battery-terribly. Granted,I've been playing with it alot since I got it,so it sees alot of time with the display on, but coming from an EnV Touch,I was shocked at how fast the battery drains. The Airplane mode "trick" works for a very short time,and it goes right back to it's old battery draining ways after just a bit.Hopefully the Froyo update fixes it right.
JL
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I have tried both of the fixes on multiple ROMs and cant seem to get my phone to drop below 100%
Now I work in the basement of a building where I usually only get one or 2 bars so that may contribute a little, but it does have pretty steady service I can download, place calls txts the whole array.
Now I have seen some results from the "fixes" occasionally it will drop down, one time I used the Recovery Image to wipe my battery history, did the proposed fixes and it sat at around 30% (much more realistic) for about 2 hours and started steadily climbing to 100.
I have reapplied these fixes some days up to 10 times in an 8 hour workday, but as it stands I am just stuck bringing a charger in with me.
This "bug" in general kind of gets to me, it gets to me because there is not any OFFICIAL information regarding it online anywhere I can find. Just a bunch of people on forums proposing the exact same bull that is hit or miss at best.
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I still don't think this bug is real. I have spoken to representatives at both LG and Verizon, LG denied it being an issue and Verizon pulled my usage info and said due to the amount of data being transferred a battery life of 4-9 hours is normal.
When I talk to these people about the 50% time without signal being displayed no one knows or cares.
As far as froyo fixing this issue I have played around with my room mates EVO4g with 2.2 and under his usage information the time w/o signal is not even displayed. This leads me to believe that the "bug" wasn't fixed, they just took away the fields that you all are so obsessed with.
Different people will have different results as far as battery life and whatnot. I noticed a difference with BatteryFU installed, which acts like juice defender, just lighter, and takes less ram to operate. But after what I would consider thorough testing (mucking about with it every day for weeks) I don't notice any actual changes with the proposed fixes.
Is it possible that we all were expecting soo much more from this low end device?
Expecting that since it is noticeably underpowered the battery life should be better than its superpowered cousins?
Personally until I get someone to find out whats going on under the hood I am disregarding this as superstition
EDIT::ADDITION::
Also I have several friends with droids running eclair (2.1) and checking they're phones under the usage info of the battery I have found that ALL OF THEM had the "50% bug" however not only had none of them heard of this, none of them noticed any difference in battery life between them and they're peers.
This is a real bug, it popped up in Android 2.1 update for HTC Eris, google it and you'll find more info. And I can prove that this is a bug because I lose 3-5% battery life with my phone just sitting there without doing the airplace trick everyday, with the airplane trick I lose about .2-.5 every minute on standby and faster when using the phone. This bug is not noticed because there's several build's of Android 2.1 that Google provides, Moto Droid had this bug the first week it came out but Motorola quickly fixed it and released an update. Also after doing airplane mode trick I dont have the "time without signal" message. So it obviously exists.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vmanisme
This is a real bug, it popped up in Android 2.1 update for HTC Eris, google it and you'll find more info. And I can prove that this is a bug because I lose 3-5% battery life with my phone just sitting there without doing the airplace trick everyday, with the airplane trick I lose about .2-.5 every minute on standby and faster when using the phone. This bug is not noticed because there's several build's of Android 2.1 that Google provides, Moto Droid had this bug the first week it came out but Motorola quickly fixed it and released an update. Also after doing airplane mode trick I dont have the "time without signal" message. So it obviously exists.
Sorry if I mislead with my last posts, I don't think its fake in the sense that everyone is hallucinating, I think that it is fake in the sense that it is solely a display issue
eg. Your phone will never go below 50% time w/o signal because it is DISPLAYING as if you had gsm and cdma active. the GSM radio (which I don't think exists in the ally) is probably not active, but the OS thinks it is and displays the Time Without Signal accordingly.
I have this "bug" myself, as do most people with ally's and quite a few with the eris and droid. The question is, does it effect battery life?
Are you sure your phone doesn't have a lame battery? Like I said, I have the bug but my phone lasts an acceptable amount of time, and from reading posts on this issue it seems like just about everyone is getting different results as far as battery life and uptime is concerned.
Sorry if I mislead with my last posts, I don't think its fake in the sense that everyone is hallucinating, I think that it is fake in the sense that it is solely a display issue
eg. Your phone will never go below 50% time w/o signal because it is DISPLAYING as if you had gsm and cdma active. the GSM radio (which I don't think exists in the ally) is probably not active, but the OS thinks it is and displays the Time Without Signal accordingly.
I have this "bug" myself, as do most people with ally's and quite a few with the eris and droid. The question is, does it effect battery life?
Are you sure your phone doesn't have a lame battery? Like I said, I have the bug but my phone lasts an acceptable amount of time, and from reading posts on this issue it seems like just about everyone is getting different results as far as battery life and uptime is concerned.
Well I really dont know I guess I'll know for sure if its battery or phone with Froyo, but I believe the GSM is there because of Verizon's LTE, Verizon already said that their 4G (LTE) will be compatible with current 3G network so the Ally might be ready for 4G, who knows, but then again its just a guess because LTE does require a SIM card and LG Ally does not have a SIM slot.
I dont care if its a real bug or not. I did the airplane mode trick and it worked. Before my battery would drop 25%-30% in 2 hours with light use (texting) and now its about half that (also using BatteryFu).
The LG Ally was one of the first Android handsets from the Korean manufacturer to see a US release. The QWERTY slider came to Verizon in the spring of 2010 as a mid-range smartphone geared towards those looking for a solid media and messaging... Read More
Oh no! Ally has the dreaded 50% bug.... :(
