Quick Battery Drain in bad reception buildings

[PittCaleb]

So my church is a cell-phone black hole. No 3G and barely 1x. They changed the password on the WiFi recently so until someone leaks it to me, my phone is near useless in the building. This stinks as I spent a considerable amount of time there over probably 4 days a week, so stinks to be me.

That said, I've noticed that on days I spent a lot of time at church, my battery life is poor. Last Sunday however, I noticed my Droid/battery was HOT when I left church and by the time I got home, it was down below 20% battery life. Was full when I awoke (media dock) so this all happened in just a few hours, most of which it was unused.

I returned that evening for some children's events and it dropped again to 20% in just another 2 hours in the building.

Thankfully the battery life has been fine all week, so I've decided that the phone is going berserk with little/no signal search repeatedly for one. Does anyone have any idea how to deal with this short of turning the phone off while in the building?

PittCaleb

Note: try to keep the church bashing and puns to a minimum ;-)

 

[Needsdecaf]

So my church is a cell-phone black hole. No 3G and barely 1x. They changed the password on the WiFi recently so until someone leaks it to me, my phone is near useless in the building. This stinks as I spent a considerable amount of time there over probably 4 days a week, so stinks to be me.

That said, I've noticed that on days I spent a lot of time at church, my battery life is poor. Last Sunday however, I noticed my Droid/battery was HOT when I left church and by the time I got home, it was down below 20% battery life. Was full when I awoke (media dock) so this all happened in just a few hours, most of which it was unused.

I returned that evening for some children's events and it dropped again to 20% in just another 2 hours in the building.

Thankfully the battery life has been fine all week, so I've decided that the phone is going berserk with little/no signal search repeatedly for one. Does anyone have any idea how to deal with this short of turning the phone off while in the building?

PittCaleb

Note: try to keep the church bashing and puns to a minimum ;-)

Maybe your phone was trying to tell you something with the heat.... I keed, I keed! Couldn't resist.

In any event, no, there really isn't a way to get rid of this behavior with so little reception. If you don't want to shut it down completely, then just put it in airplane mode. You can still enable wifi after that when someone sneaks you the password.

 

[square]

that'll do it. if you don't ant to turn it off, use airplane mode.

 

[colnago]

Higher rate of battery drain due to low/weak signal has been well documented here.

 

[kennyidaho]

Nothing new to any mobile....especially smart phones.

 

[Droid_Junky]

Do you have Beautiful Widgets installed? I work in a building that has no signal. Since the last update it has been draining my battery because of the GPS attempting to run. Batttery use has been around 65% in a 6 hour period unless I put it in airplane mode.

 

[colnago]

Do you have Beautiful Widgets installed? I work in a building that has no signal. Since the last update it has been draining my battery because of the GPS attempting to run. Batttery use has been around 65% in a 6 hour period unless I put it in airplane mode.

Its got nothing to do with extra software running, so much as its the radio/sytem fighting to acquire a signal. I had my fully charged battery drain, after pulling it off the charger, down to 20% in 3.5hrs in a "low signal" (0-1 bars) area.

Alternatively, one could pick up where I left off with an antenna mod:

http://androidforums.com/motorola-d...rough-3g-1x-switching.html?highlight=homemade

 

[fildrigar]

The best thing to do is switch it to Airplane mode. Or try to sit next to a window.

 

[PittCaleb]

I never noticed this with my other phones in the same building and it was certainly worse last week than in previous weeks with the Droid. Was wondering if there was code out there to ask it to "SLOW DOWN" in trying to find a signal. Airplane mode or just leave it in the car I suppose.

The pun about the heat was a good one ;-) Perhaps last week's sermon was "just for me" ...

PittCaleb

 

[cyearns]

I work in the basement of my building and I also have poor service there...I turned off roaming so it's only looking for Sprint and not another service. It helped with the battery life, but not a lot. I just keep a spare charger at my desk.

My BB was the same way too.

 

[teschoen]

I had a Samsung i730 that did that. Super Target stores were the worst. Droid Does it too. Metal Buildings are signal black holes

and the phone tries to compensate by boosting power.

 

[cyearns]

Metal Buildings are signal black holes

If you want to get technical metal actually reflects radio signals which creates multipath distortion and other issues. Concrete will absorb radio waves.

At least that's how I understand it.

 

[summerfish]

Nothing new to any mobile....especially smart phones.

Here here. During Winter Camp my phone would die within a few hours from a full charge because it was continuously looking for signal because there wasn't any. Like said previously, if you're used to not having reception in there, then turn it to Airplane mode. My friend lived in a dead zone so the same thing would happen, so I told him to keep his phone in airplane mode while at home.

 

[messenger13]

W.W.J.D.??? He would use airplane mode, I'm sure of it. That's just how the Big Guy roils.

 

[FrayAdjacent]

Higher rate of battery drain due to low/weak signal has been well documented here.

Yep, got crappy signal at home before I got the VZW base station. One day, 45 minutes of calls ate 70% of my battery.

Weak signal can eat up your battery. This is well known.