AT&T 950 Bad Battery Life: Cellular Data to Blame?

[n7slc]

Okay, the last thing we need is another crappy battery life thread but I've mentioned this in multiple threads and have yet too have anyone confirm or deny that their AT&T 950 exhibits the same behavior as mine.

The little arrow above the cellular signal bars on my phone rarely turns off, even on WiFi. This arrow indicates data transfer and can be verified by disabling cellular data. There have been other posts about data use for the 950 /XL going up even though the users haven't changed their data use habits. I went from a meager 1.5gb per month to over 4gb without changing my daily phone use. I'm certain that this is the main cause for my battery drain but can't pin down what is causing it. I've resorted to turning off cellular data while at home and the office.



Has anyone experienced this? Anyone with any of the 950/XL versions that are experiencing poor battery life seeing the little data arrow on all the time even on WiFi?

I'd love to know if I'm the only one.

EDIT: I forgot to add that my AT&T 640LTE is running the latest preview and doesn't have this issue and it has excellent battery life. Yeah, yeah, I know you can't really compare those two phones but the one thing I CAN compare is the fact that the little arrow on the 640 is almost always off when I'm on WiFi.

 

[Zane Yacoob]

Hi. Though i'm not sure what has been eating my battery life i manage to sort mine out although it still runs warm under charge but other than that its almost perfect. its using 40% a day, that's with an entire day(12 hours) of use. all you need to do is reset your device, make sure you back-up your information, thereafter remove your memory card. go into settings-> system->storage, scroll down to save location and ensure that for downloads "This Device" is selected. then go to update & security and check for updates. update .29 should be available. after installing the update then you have one awesome windows phone to get to discover. the new update hasn't fixed the arrow above the network bars but its still save alot of battery life. Another thing you'd wan to check is that every time you restart your device it defaults screen brightness back to 50% also check the apps that have access to work in the background and turnoff those that you feel don't need to run in the background. im running MTN in South Africa.

 

[northernpipeman]

Thanks for suggestion, but can you clarifying if you are proposing a hard reset (i.e. back to factory conditions), and removing the SD card? Do you then recover the WM10 back-up? If so, does your method indicate that the SD card is the culprit?

Also, what battery life have you achieved? I get an estimate of 24-30 hours from a full charge, with ~5% used overnight with 4G/wifi on, and then ~5% per hour in the day if I avoid using Edge or other data uses. If I use data, then it runs down at about 10% every 30-mins.

 

[n7slc]

Thanks for the suggestions Zane, but I've hard rest and never restored from a backup. The problem exists whether I have the SD card installed or not. Incidentally, I've was using the same SD card (Samsung 32GB Evo) in my 640 without issue.

 

[MiloTheOne]

If that's the case, it makes perfect sense why the 950/XL drains are so bad. It's possible that's why MSFT updated the firmware back to back.

 

[uselessrobot]

Weak cellular connection and poor battery life seem to go hand in hand on all devices. My friend's iPhone 5 has always had poor battery life because the entire day it's hunting for a usable signal. Perhaps some phones and OSs are better at mitigating this problem than others.

 

[WPmunkey]

Doesn't happen for me. I get great battery life even when not on WiFi