Do you turn 4G LTE off?

[ZachMob]

Even though I live in a 4G area, I leave my phone mainly in CDMA only mode most of the time because of battery life and network issues.

I am just wondering if others do the same.

 

[Deleted User]

You know, I really expected that I would do this, mostly because there's no reason to leave 4G on when the phone is just doing background syncing and stuff.

I'm getting stellar battery life without doing it, though, so there's really no point - I just leave 4G on all the time.

 

[hlsilver]

I've had 4G off for the last 3 or 4 days, really haven't felt the need for 4G plus I enjoy having the extra battery life.


That and I forgot I had turned it off...

 

[BubbaNexus]

if you live in a 4g area why would you turn it off? why own a 4g phone?

if you don't live in a 4g area, why buy a 4g phone?

 

[ZachMob]

if you live in a 4g area why would you turn it off? why own a 4g phone?

if you don't live in a 4g area, why buy a 4g phone?

4G occasionally drops my data connections. 3G is good enough for my needs and is rock solid reliable. I will use 4g more when Verizon fixes its network issues.

4G isn't the only selling point of the phone. I would still buy a Galaxy Nexus if I lived in a 3g area. Last time I checked, no 3g phones have ICS installed.

 

[jbdan]

Always on, always

 

[clb2196]

I get great 4g almost everywhere around here, so it stays on. I haven't had battery issues either. Only time it goes off is when I visit family in CT where there is no 4g at all.

 

[gespo89]

With my current rom, I have a toggle button up in the notifications menu, so I usually turn it off unless I'm actively using something data intensive since it takes all of 2 seconds to toggle it. You never know when a little extra battery might be helpful.

 

[dmodert66]

Leave it on all the time for now. Love the speed and I'm always in a 4G area. 4 of us at work have a GNex. The newest member said he was having signal issues. I told him all of us always have 4G. He showed me his phone and it wasn't showing 4G or 3G. Just bars. We where standing right next to each other and I had 4 bars of 4G, so I think he needs to take his back.

Battery life has been good for me. That said I have a charging cable on my PC at work, charger in the car and a charger at home. This sucker always has juice Otherwise, I can go about 9 or 10 hours with moderate usage which is my average work day, so fine by me.

 

[redraptor]

Has anyone figured out if the data problems are hardware or software? This is my first full day of using this phone and the 4G was a little sketch, which I was fully aware of. In my home and within 10/15 miles, its pretty reliable. In certain spots it teeters between 3G and 4G and it can kind of be a pain in the ass, but otherwise its super fast. Its more annoying that the device likes to go into an idle period during switch over, but other than that its solid.

I have it rocking 4G constantly and plan on keeping it that way. I just hope that this is more software related so this little problem can be resolved.

 

[Tim K]

I'm on the edge of 4G so my connection comes and goes and I think the constant switching was hurting my battery life. I usually turn 4G off at home (where I have wifi anyway) and on whenever I leave.

 

[SeattleYanksFan]

4G has been essentially perfect since the latest outage and my battery life is just fine (generally just have to charge once per day before bed), so I never turn it off. I bought a 4G phone to use... 4G.

 

[kg2128]

Always leave it on. Too great of a difference in speed once i got used to LTE can't go back even with the battery life being worse.

 

[xliderider]

I live in a fringe 3G/4G area, so at home I turn 4G off, use a 1x network extender and use wifi exclusively for data. Yeah, sucks to be me.

 

[Dubbin1]

I pretty much leave it off at all times since I really have no need for it.

 

[Deleted User]

if you live in a 4g area why would you turn it off? why own a 4g phone?

if you don't live in a 4g area, why buy a 4g phone?

...because the phone, independent of 4G, was the best one available.

Without 4G, you still have the best 3G phone that Verizon carries.

Your logic doesn't make any sense. I don't use face unlock. Why did I buy a phone with face unlock? I don't use a lot of things on my phone. You don't buy the phone because you need 100% of the features on it - you buy it because it matches all, or most of, the features that you do want. So if you wanted a great 3G phone with a pure Google experience - which phone, pray tell, did you expect them to buy?

 

[TheWenger]

I used to leave it off, but then I got an extended battery, and flashed AOKP with LeanKernel. Now I leave it on all the time.

 

[nj02vette]

I leave it on all the time.

 

[SeattleYanksFan]

...because the phone, independent of 4G, was the best one available.

Without 4G, you still have the best 3G phone that Verizon carries.

Your logic doesn't make any sense. I don't use face unlock. Why did I buy a phone with face unlock? I don't use a lot of things on my phone. You don't buy the phone because you need 100% of the features on it - you buy it because it matches all, or most of, the features that you do want. So if you wanted a great 3G phone with a pure Google experience - which phone, pray tell, did you expect them to buy?

In all fairness, while I agree with you to an extent, face unlock and 4G are two incredibly different features. 4G is what your phone runs on when downloading data any time you use your phone. It is much faster than 3G and affects probably 75% or more of what people do on their phones. Face unlock is an added gimmick that hardly affects real-world use of your phone at all. If you removed the face unlock feature, 98% of people wouldn't even know it was gone. If you removed 4G, 98% of people would be rioting.

That is not to say everyone must use 4G even if they can, I understand that speed isn't as important as battery life to some people; however, to say 4G serves a similar purpose to all features is not true.

 

[jimmypop13]

I wish I could leave it on but it seems to drain battery really fast. I normally use wifi at home and turn off all data when I'm not using the phone for a while or I'm asleep. I can still make and receive calls and txt so I'm good. Its how I'm at 19 hours and 31% battery right now and the AOKP rom makes it easy to swap between wifi, data, 3g and 4g bc there are pull down toggles for all of them.
I love this phone!

 

[OfTheDamned]

I live in a 4g area, but often travel outside of that area. When I am in a 4g area I leave it on, but when I hit an area that doesn't have it and I am going to be there for a while I will switch over to 3g to save battery life.

 

[sranger]

The 4G network is simply too unreliable right now. I turn 4G off most of the time even though I live in 4G area. The 3G seems much more reliable and yeilds great battery life.

I wanted a 4G phone for the time when it is as stable and widely available as 3G on Verizon's network....(At least I hope that happens some time in the next year or two)

 

[ZachMob]

In all fairness, while I agree with you to an extent, face unlock and 4G are two incredibly different features. 4G is what your phone runs on when downloading data any time you use your phone. It is much faster than 3G and affects probably 75% or more of what people do on their phones. Face unlock is an added gimmick that hardly affects real-world use of your phone at all. If you removed the face unlock feature, 98% of people wouldn't even know it was gone. If you removed 4G, 98% of people would be rioting.

That is not to say everyone must use 4G even if they can, I understand that speed isn't as important as battery life to some people; however, to say 4G serves a similar purpose to all features is not true.

For light web browsing, facebook and email, 3G is good enough. The iPhone is selling like hotcakes for Verizon and it has no 4g.

The only thing that I notice when web browsing on 3g, is that it takes longer for pictures to load on websites. The text and layout are loaded first, so it rarely impacts what I am doing.

It's not the battery life that is the worst problem, it is the drop in data connections with 4g on Verizon. When I am quickly trying to find some info online or getting directions, the last thing I want to see is a connection error.

Maybe I am the minority here, but I don't see that 4G LTE is what its cracked up to be. I turned off 4G and don't miss a thing about it.

 

[SolidOrange]

i leave it on most of the time, only turn it off if i know i am going to be driving through areas with no 4g, or my battery starts to get low. leaving it off for an entire day, i will have 20-25% more battery with the same use as i would have had leaving it on for that amount of time. i hope they can solve the LTE battery drain issue soon, it seems to be a problem on every device so far.

 

[zerocool79346]

i leave it on most of the time, only turn it off if i know i am going to be driving through areas with no 4g, or my battery starts to get low. leaving it off for an entire day, i will have 20-25% more battery with the same use as i would have had leaving it on for that amount of time. i hope they can solve the LTE battery drain issue soon, it seems to be a problem on every device so far.

Unfortunately its not an issue per say. LTE chips just are not as power efficient yet and when you live in an area of fair to poor coverage, the extra drain is much more noticeable.