I finally figured out my 920 battery problem.

[mr_808]

Like many of you my battery can sometimes be great and other times absolutely horrible. Well, I decided to test a theory of mine and it seems to be doing the trick.

I work in a pretty big hospital/university and I often notice that my phone struggles to keep a network signal when I'm out walking around(I do AV work and am rarely at my desk for very long). Since the university provides free wireless campus wide, I decided to turn off my network connection and just use the wifi. When you do this you can still send/receive calls and texts, but you can't send /receive MMS. This is day three of me trying this and every day so far has yielded excellent battery life.

On a side note, I really wish there was a way to toggle between 3G and 4G, though. I like having 4G but so far I haven't it to be a necessity. It also seems that just being connected to 4G drains my battery more quickly. I'm going to test that next week and post the results the later.
[Edit]: If you are with AT&T calling ##3282 will give you access to additional Network Settings by accessing the "..." in the bottom right corner. Thank you to Ozi1950!!!)

[Edit]:
You should know that:I do have the Portico Update
I don't staty constantly connected to Wifi
I try to remember to back out of every program that is running so very few process are running
Email sync is set to "Daily"
I only have 6 unblocked background tasks: AccuWeather, APMobile, CNN, IMDB, Metrotube, Weather.

 

[RandomNinjaAtk]

So your only turning of the data connection? My battery life is erratic at times, but I went on vacation to the Dominican and when the Data connection was turned off due to roaming, I happened to notice the same results of my battery life being excellent. I may need to test this further...

 

[jimski]

Good observation. With screen on, the biggest drain is your screen. With screen off, its your data connection. All the other things that effect your battery pale in comparison. Manage those (well hard to do with the first one) and performance will improve.

On my 900, suddenly battery performance has improved dramatically the past month, going from 4-5% drain per hour while sleeping to 2-2.5%. No changes at my end, but I assume that AT&T made some changes to their LTE signal (still average 3-4 bars at home/work). That's getting me an extra 25-35% by the end of the day.
Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

 

[congusano]

the most likely culprit is a process in the background that didn't stop properly and is consuming CPU.
For example, after leaving my phone beside for 7 hours, it drained a total of 3% and that is after watching Netflix for about 20 minutes on it.

Other nights, sitting in the same exact place, it drained 70%.

 

[dkp23]

I left my phone overnight off the charger at 100%, woke up with 100% left from 11pm to 8am.

Battery draining 1-2% per hour when not being used at all is excessive to me.

 

[TK2011]

I left my phone overnight off the charger at 100%, woke up with 100% left from 11pm to 8am.

Battery draining 1-2% per hour when not being used at all is excessive to me.

It depends on many things. If I turn off data, I was able to stay at 100% over 8 hours. But not with data on (100% level would stay on for about 2-3 hours only on standby). 1-2% per hour is perfectly within normal range. 3-4% is also normal, I think, depending on signal strength and network configuration.

The biggest drain I've seen is when you have LTE and LTE signal is very marginal. It really kills your battery if you stay in that mode, like 8+% every hour.

Battery problem is not just with WP8 or L920. Seems to happen with other LTE phones as well. Go to iphone 5 forums and you will see tons of people complaining about battery dying out in mid afternoon.

 

[mr_808]

I left my phone overnight off the charger at 100%, woke up with 100% left from 11pm to 8am.

Battery draining 1-2% per hour when not being used at all is excessive to me.

That's what I'm getting with now with my network data connection turned off. Prior to this test my battery was draining between 5-10%

 

[mr_808]

So your only turning of the data connection? My battery life is erratic at times, but I went on vacation to the Dominican and when the Data connection was turned off due to roaming, I happened to notice the same results of my battery life being excellent. I may need to test this further...

Yep, that's all I'm doing and I'm getting great battery life! Next week I'm going to try running off LTE alone. I'll turn off wifi and then see what happens to my battery.

 

[SlightlyDum]

Like many of you my battery can sometimes be great and other times absolutely horrible. Well, I decided to test a theory of mine and it seems to be doing the trick.

I work in a pretty big hospital/university and I often notice that my phone struggles to keep a network signal when I'm out walking around(I do AV work and am rarely at my desk for very long). Since the university provides free wireless campus wide, I decided to turn off my network connection and just use the wifi. When you do this you can still send/receive calls and texts, but you can't send /receive MMS. This is day three of me trying this and every day so far has yielded excellent battery life.

On a side note, I really wish there was a way to toggle between 3G and 4G, though. I like having 4G but so far I haven't it to be a necessity. It also seems that just being connected to 4G drains my battery more quickly. I'm going to test that next week and post the results the later.

Yeah, i was having the same problem in my condo... just bad connection. But what i did, instead of turning it off completely. I changed the data to 2g instead of 4g or 3g and now i'm getting 1 1/2 day to 2 days without charge. Go to setting/mobile network... Change highest connection speed to 2g. No need to completely turn it off it you want to receive mms.

 

[Squatting Hen]

I think what happes with mine is that the LTE signal gets very week and does not recover. For example every day my phone has bad battery life at work and I barely use it, compared to a day at home. I have to pull into a parking garage, and go three levels down. I think my signal gets very week and does not recover for some reason. While at work the phone just drains. If I turn the phone off and then back on the problem is fixed.

Here is another thread where this was discussed.

http://forums.windowscentral.com/no...se-prevention-network-signal.html#post1843545

 

[uselessrobot]

LTE is known to be an energy hog. Hunting for a good signal is also a problem, but that affects all devices. My friend's iPhone 4 barely lasts a day because of bad reception.

My experience has led me to the same conclusion as others that inexplicable battery drain is due to poorly optimized apps consuming resources while in the background or not closing out properly.

But absolutely, disabling core functionality helps. Put a phone in airplane mode and it will go forever.

 

[dkp23]

It depends on many things. If I turn off data, I was able to stay at 100% over 8 hours. But not with data on (100% level would stay on for about 2-3 hours only on standby). 1-2% per hour is perfectly within normal range. 3-4% is also normal, I think, depending on signal strength and network configuration.

The biggest drain I've seen is when you have LTE and LTE signal is very marginal. It really kills your battery if you stay in that mode, like 8+% every hour.

Battery problem is not just with WP8 or L920. Seems to happen with other LTE phones as well. Go to iphone 5 forums and you will see tons of people complaining about battery dying out in mid afternoon.

Fortunately for me, I dont have this issue at all with LTE. I am in U.S with LTE on ATT. I have 3 apps running in background that update every 30 minutes or an hour, 2 push emails, one every 30 minutes no bluetooth/nfc on. It doesn't drain not in use.

I agree many factors play a role, but in my experience, if you sleep for 8 hours and it drains 1-2% then likely you have 88% assuming half the time is 1% and the other is 2%. That is pretty excessive assuming minimal or no calls overnight.

I guess i am just on the other end of the spectrum with my experience.

 

[xWisp]

I really wish there was a way to toggle between 3G and 4G, though. I like having 4G but so far I haven't it to be a necessity. It also seems that just being connected to 4G drains my battery more quickly.

There is a toggle.
Settings > Mobile network
and set the highest connection speed to 3G instead of 4G.

 

[LazySunday]

I did run my own battery tests (still running). Following are my observations:

1. I have a prepaid data connection set to a max speed of H+ (3.5G). I've noticed if I turn off data and use just Wi-fi alone I get excellent battery life draining 1-2% per hour with a call here and there or a quick mail check
2. I install whatsapp on wi-fi the battery drains a little faster going upto 4% per hour as the applications constantly polls data to its server instead of using push notifications
3. If I uninstall Whatsapp and turn on 3G data, battery drains a bit faster going 4-6%.

Moreover, what I noticed is once you turn on the data connection your phone is always connected to the network in data mode. Unfortunately, the phone doesn't switch off its data mode automatically when it connects to Wifi. I noticed this because the moment I turn off the data from settings, I get a message from my network detailing the data I'd used, which means the phone remains connected in data mode whether it uses the network data or not. Probably, the biggest battery drain because connecting to network in data mode is not energy efficient. My previous phone Nokia C7 used to connect to Mobile data only when there is no wi-fi. The moment I get the wi-fi, my data automatically used to get disconnected and I used to get a message from my network on the usage details.

I know I can manually turn off data connection when on Wi-fi, but I guess my phone should be handling it more efficiently. I'm getting very good battery life by turning off my 3g data. But then, I'm forced to turn data on manually if I'm out of my wifi range. I guess MS or Nokia can sort out this issue. I believe that once the phone is in Wifi mode, the cellular data must be disconnected automatically. But again, what if the phone is streaming something and I walk out of my wifi zone and my phone has to confirm that there is no wifi and then connect to network data ( huge lag time). Is there any other way to handle this? I've seen my android friends, they constantly toggle the data connection on and off using their top tray drawer to retain the battery life. In fact they can't even imagine leaving their data connection turned on. I tested Galaxy SII and it drains much faster than Lumia 920 on always connected mode.

But I'm still not sure how different OS's are optimizing this issue of data connectivity. Last, I'm sick of going into settings to see percentage of battery remaining, why can't WP8 just show it next to time.

 

[realwarder]

There is a toggle.
Settings > Mobile network
and set the highest connection speed to 3G instead of 4G.

Not on AT&T there isn't

 

[realwarder]

Tried all these things.

Isn't the cell network (same large battery/random drain when on or off).

 

[a5cent]

I decided to turn off my network connection and just use the WiFi. This is day three of me trying this and every day so far has yielded excellent battery life.

That makes far more sense than the theory of battery drainage due to a rogue app regularly and recklessly flogging the CPU in the background.

Unfortunately, LTE isn't very power efficient with data transfers. Anyone interested in a very technical explanation as to why, might want to take a look at this.

Your theory also jives with all those reporting much improved battery life when using 3G or 2G instead of LTE/4G. Obviously, setting the device to airplane mode will deactivate all radios including LTE, so that's just exploiting the same effect.

Next week I'm going to try running off LTE alone. I'll turn off WiFi and then see what happens to my battery.

Have you got the portico update? If so, have you enabled WiFi always on? Are you always within range of your universities WiFi during the day? In any case, you need to be aware of those parameters during that test. Good luck!

This is what I expect you'll find:

1. If LazySunday's findings are correct (see below), then you should experience excessive battery drain.
2. If LazySunday's findings are incorrect, and you remain connected to a WiFi network at all times, meaning your LTE modems turn off properly. then you shouldn't experience much more battery drain than when you turned LTE off entirely/manually.

Moreover, what I noticed is once you turn on the data connection your phone is always connected to the network in data mode. Unfortunately, the phone doesn't switch off its data mode automatically when it connects to Wifi. I noticed this because the moment I turn off the data from settings, I get a message from my network detailing the data I'd used, which means the phone remains connected in data mode whether it uses the network data or not. Probably, the biggest battery drain because connecting to network in data mode is not energy efficient.

Very interesting tests you are running there. I nominate you for the WPC techie award! ;-) Your results make absolute sense too:

• 3G is about twice as power efficient as LTE/4G
• WiFi is about five times as power efficient as 3G or 10 times as power efficient as LTE/4G

I'm not quite sure what that means to "always be connected to the network". But it would be disastrous if it meant your LTE modems are not being allowed to transition into their lowest power states during that time. That would almost certainly constitute a bug in the OS.

The worst possible scenario would be some entity regularly and often exchanging data over LTE in small amounts. That could be an app on our phones, or it could be our carriers, as they too are capable of "waking up" our phone to exchange data at any time.

If only we had an app to monitor LTE modem power states and data traffic, so we could see exactly what is being exchanged, how often and by whom. That would probably allow us to solve this problem once and for all... ask Nokia?

 

[mr_808]

There is a toggle.
Settings > Mobile network
and set the highest connection speed to 3G instead of 4G.

I definitely do not have that on my phone. I can only go to Settings> Cellular and then I get this:

 

[w_byrnes]

It may not be the network. It could just be the internet explorer. It does not actually stop if you just use the back button - you need to close all the tabs.

 

[poddie]

I definitely do not have that on my phone. I can only go to Settings> Cellular and then I get this:

View attachment 27947

I believe this feature has been removed from WP on the AT&T network. It stinks.