does airplane mode work?

[js14873]

Cliff's notes:
1. Does your phone use a surprising amount of battery while in airplane mode?
2. Does your phone spontaneously exit airplane mode without your input?

The backstory:
I hike a lot in Colorado backcountry where cell service is spotty. To keep the battery from draining I put the phone in airplane mode so it's not wasting power searching for a signal.

On Saturday, I left my vehicle at 6am and put my phone in airplane mode. At 7:20am it was finally bright enough out to take a decent photo, and I pulled my phone out to discover it was NOT in airplane mode; somehow it had exited on its own. It couldn't have been long because fortunately the battery was still in the 90%+ range.

I put it back in airplane mode and took 29 photos and 2 videos (each 15 seconds or less) over the course of the next few hours, and around 11:20am I took the last photo before the phone died. I'm almost certain it was still in airplane mode when it turned off because it came back up in airplane mode when I got to my car and connected the charger. So that's 5 hours and 20 minutes of standby time, in contrast to today where I'm currently going on 6 hours with at least an hour of web browsing/social media and texting and am still at 42%. What explanation is there for this other than the phone doing something in airplane mode that it shouldn't have been?

 

[Maurizio Troso]

Which device pls and Windows build

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Cliff's notes:
1. Does your phone use a surprising amount of battery while in airplane mode?
2. Does your phone spontaneously exit airplane mode without your input?

The backstory:
I hike a lot in Colorado backcountry where cell service is spotty. To keep the battery from draining I put the phone in airplane mode so it's not wasting power searching for a signal.

On Saturday, I left my vehicle at 6am and put my phone in airplane mode. At 7:20am it was finally bright enough out to take a decent photo, and I pulled my phone out to discover it was NOT in airplane mode; somehow it had exited on its own. It couldn't have been long because fortunately the battery was still in the 90%+ range.

I put it back in airplane mode and took 29 photos and 2 videos (each 15 seconds or less) over the course of the next few hours, and around 11:20am I took the last photo before the phone died. I'm almost certain it was still in airplane mode when it turned off because it came back up in airplane mode when I got to my car and connected the charger. So that's 5 hours and 20 minutes of standby time, in contrast to today where I'm currently going on 6 hours with at least an hour of web browsing/social media and texting and am still at 42%. What explanation is there for this other than the phone doing something in airplane mode that it shouldn't have been?

I'm thinking there's a background app that keeps sending requests for signal and that drains the battery - can you check to see which apps use a lot of battery when in flight mode?

 

[js14873]

it's a Lumia Icon on the public production release of 14393.67, and has been hard reset (no backup restore) since the update.

I can check as soon as I have an opportunity to spend some time in airplane mode...I'll turn it on when I go to bed tonight and check in the morning.

 

[Maurizio Troso]

In teory, Airplane mode means voice + data carrier, wifi, gps, BT and NFC are forced OFF.
Not all phone is off.

 

[js14873]

In teory, Airplane mode means voice + data carrier, wifi, gps, BT and NFC are forced OFF.
Not all phone is off.

agreed, but I think it's reasonable to expect the battery to last longer with those off than on. Instead it's burning even faster, which makes no sense unless like Chintan suggests, an app is going overactive while not getting a signal...and even that I consider a bug.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

agreed, but I think it's reasonable to expect the battery to last longer with those off than on. Instead it's burning even faster, which makes no sense unless like Chintan suggests, an app is going overactive while not getting a signal...and even that I consider a bug.

like a child who cries in the dark but will sleep knowing there's light even though it doesn't need the light on to sleep

 

[Pieter Wolff]

I encountered also a high battery use on my 830 when I switched to airplane mode every night. Drops of between 10 and 20 % were the norm.
Chintan suggested checking in the morning which apps used the most juice during the night and in my case it was TimeMe Tile and Microsoft Health that were the biggest culprits.
I now switch these 2 apps off as running in the background at night and the battery now only drops 2 to 5% so it pays to check which apps are running in the background during airplane mode.

 

[Paolo Ferrazza]

agreed, but I think it's reasonable to expect the battery to last longer with those off than on. Instead it's burning even faster, which makes no sense unless like Chintan suggests, an app is going overactive while not getting a signal...and even that I consider a bug.

Yup if that's the case it's a bug in the OS since it should kill background processes using too much CPU time.