Question How does 5G affect battery compared to 4G? - Google Pixel 6 Pro

Does anyone yet know how 5G will affect the battery life compared to 4G?
The phone would now not only seek for a better 4G signal tower but also for a 5G cell tower?
As far as I understand:
Adaptive connectivity should disable/enable 5G based on usage
That means with "screen off" I will hopefully not suffer from higher battery drain due to constantly trying to get a good 5G cell tower
5G uses more power due to its higher performance. But is only when actually using 5G (e.g. massive downloading)
When there is weak 4G signal, I might actually have better signal due to 5G availability
Is that correct?

Yeah, I think you're correct.

At 100% charge before turning in for the night, wifi connected, I lose about 2% at night.
I'll have to turn wifi off to check the drain at night for 5G/4G, but I believe the adaptive
band switching helps the battery life. I think even though it says 5G, it runs 4G unless you
really need the bandwith, and, are in range of a 5G signal.

Related

Battery Question

I've noticed that the battery drains much faster on 3G/4G than Wifi. What i've read is that wifi uses more battery than 3G and 4G uses the most. I don't find much difference between 3g/4g and find much better battery while on wifi.
please advise.
thanks.
wifi uses way less battery than either 3g or 4g.
The battery life will depend on the signal strength of your 3G or 4G connection. This does not always equate with the number of bars. (Settings=>About phone=>Status=>Signal strength) A reading of -90 dBm is better than -109 dBm. Being inside a building vs outside will give you different readings as well. You are likely to get a stronger signal outside in the open than inside an inclosed space. The weaker your 3G/4G signal, the more power required to sustain the connection. Your WiFi signal (assuming it's strong) will help conserve your battery better than a weak 3G/4G signal.
Its commonly known that wifi indeed uses much less battery life that 3g. Wifi latency and speeds compensate and you get much longer battery life using wifi rather than 3g. So use wifi whenever possible.
You even see manufacturers rated specs confirm this. Look at apple's specs for iphone, they give higher times on wifi than 3g. And anandtech tests confirm this with every handset they test.

Just gotta email from sprint

They were sayn that wifi saves batt up to 50%. Ive always been told the exact oppisite. Wifi kills batt life. Wtf
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
harley1rocker said:
They were sayn that wifi saves batt up to 50%. Ive always been told the exact oppisite. Wifi kills batt life. Wtf
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Depends on distance/strength of wifi signal...
It's a good way for them convince you to not use your data connection for a while and slow down the network.
Sent from my Super Galaxy'd SPH-D710
I got an email/text or statement insert saying the exact same thing. Funny thing is ever since that statement I have always made sure to have wifi on when home.
I know it sorta turns off when disconnected but then it scans and picks up wifi networks so I just turn it off when I leave the house.
On my OG Evo I did not notice any change in battery life with wifi on.
Searching for WiFi is what really kills the battery which is why I turn mine off and on manually rather than leaving it on. If I'm in an area with WiFi available and my 3G signal is low, then I'll turn on my WiFi, also when I'm at work or home my WiFi is always on but if I'm out and about then I keep WiFi off rather than have it drain my battery constantly looking for signal.
Technically, I think Wifi takes up less battery than, say 3G when actively used.
Just a guess o-0
MochaCharok said:
Technically, I think Wifi takes up less battery than, say 3G when actively used.
Just a guess o-0
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would think this is true, especially if you're sitting close to the router like at home or work rather than pinging off a cell tower however far away.
It goes both way guys. When idle, wifi consumes more battery than an active cellular data connection.
By virtue of simply being more efficient, wifi consumes "less" when actively using it. This is, however, because of the generally increased data speeds: it takes less time to accomplish a task (I.e. downloading a file), thus providing battery savings. In this regards, even 4g consumes less battery, even though it technically takes more juice to run 4g.
The way to really look at it so it becomes clear is say, hypothetically, you had a wifi connection whose internet side connection was very slow. In this regards, wifi doesn't save you any battery, and will probably end up consuming more, simply because its gain in efficiency is now gone.
Of course sprint wants us to get off cell data as much as possible, but in a lot of real world situations, it will save someone battery. Take my typical work day for example:
I wake up at home, drive to work, stay at work all day, then go home and probably stay there. I have good wifi connections both at home and work. Now, if I was the kind of user that didn't auto sync anything, I would probably end up using more battery life than I need to if I left wifi on all day, simply because I'm pumping juice into a radio that isn't being used.
However, I DO use a lot of auto sync functions, which means that my phone is actively using data a lot throughout the day. In this case, the battery drain due to the time in which wifi is left idle is out-weighed by the gain in battery life I get by the times my wifi is now being used instead a cell connection.
In a nutshell, as I said at the beginning, cellular data connection is more efficient at being idle than wifi (provided it's a good connection), and wifi is more efficient at being actively used (again, provided it's a good connection and the internet-side speed is sufficient).
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
My battery last far longer on wifi than 4g, not even close in my book.
Since I have wi-fi at work and home I can say there is a HUGE difference - especially since at home and work the 3G/4G signals are so weak that the phone burns quite a bit of battery just searching for a signal. Hoping that this will change as NV completes in the area but it might be the frequency that we're on is not too friendly with the newer building materials.
Yes, using wifi will save you more battery life than using your 3g/4g
Pastie13 said:
My battery last far longer on wifi than 4g, not even close in my book.
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Click to collapse
4g is a completely different animal than 3g when it comes to battery drain. So far when on 4g your battery life is sucked out of your phone. The email Sprint sends out I would safely say is comparing 3g to wifi.
That same tip is on Sprints website when you log into your account. It is on the right hand side.
As for battery life my findings have been WIFI uses less juice when the signal is good. 3G uses less juice when the throughput is good. So when I am on 3G in an area that has good speeds I can hit near 30 hours of battery.
I can do the same on WIFI when the WIFI signal is good, but if the WIFI signal is on the lower end the throughput slows since the quality has been lowered.
So in essence the better the throughput the better the battery, because when the phone wakes to check on any sync items setup the longer it takes to make that check the longer the CPU is at max and the more battery drain occurs. And I'm not talking signal strength for 3G since you'll get more drain on the battery in lesser areas because the phone is naturally going to have to boost the transmitter power. I'm talking best signal and crappy 3G network throughput. That is where the drain comes from.
I have tested this in my house with my WIFI and my Airave. On WIFI if I go outside my WIFI range is really bad and my battery drains a lot quicker. If I turn off the WIFI and use the Airave, which has a much higher transmitter power, I can get great battery. I have also seen this in over night testing. My WIFI is in the living room which is 5 walls away and the signal is pretty poor. If I leave my WIFI on over night and not charge my phone I loose 50% battery and when trying to use my phone for internet I get super bad throughput since I am on the edge of the signal. But turn off my WIFI and ride on the Airave I only loose 15% over night and the internet is great, but limited to 1.5m since it is 3G. So if you download a 1meg attachment. 3G takes 2 min and WIFI take 4 min then 3G will use less battery. This also goes vis versa. Whoever is maxing the CPU the longest is your battery killer because both are always on and always ready when they are selected.
Hope I didn't go into to much detail, but transmit power is not the big thing here it is throughput quality of the signal. The worst the throughput the more time it takes to transmit and thus more battery as the CPU is maxed till the job is complete.

[Q] 3G Battery consumption

Hey,
when I use 3G I get about 2H of screen time,
and when I use WiFi I get about 4H (max).
My usage is WhatsApp, Browser etc..
Is it normal that I'm getting half of the time with 3G?
Can it be fixed with another baseband?
Any help?
3G uses more battery since it's also searching for better connection all the time(unless you choose 2G only in mobile network options, then you get better battery but speed is not so fast anymore).
I can confirm that a weak 3G connection gobbles up battery charge very quickly. This is a flaw in the radio firmware or perhaps somewhere else. Of course the phone should switch to 2G automatically when 3G is not used intensively, but uses excessive amounts of electricity, but the designers apparently overlooked this.
Your main option is, as already mentioned, to do the thing manually that your phone fails to do automatically—force 2G only.
If you do that, don't forget to disable the force-2G option again when (a) you need the higher speed and the connection is good enough for that, or (b) if you moved into an area with better reception, like 3 or 4 bars.
Alternatively, leave the settings untouched, i.e. 3G enabled, and keep charging the phone if you are stationary and have electricity nearby. You can charge from a computer, albeit at half speed.
I almost always have 3/4 bars, so I don't think I have a connection problem.

Question Adaptive Connectivity

By default, the Adaptive Connectivity option is on to sense and handoff between connections to supposedly improve battery life. That said, I've noticed with the feature on, the Pixel 6 Pro stays on LTE, instead of 5G a lot more often than Samsung devices. I also noticed that Wi-Fi signal would trail off a bit when not actively in use (maybe a low power sleep mode?). I'm testing it with that feature turned off now to see if it makes much difference. Granted, 5G quality varies heavily, so there are times when 4G would be better. What are your experiences with this feature?
Battery life has been outstanding on the Pixel 6 Pro by the way.
It's going to be somewhat subjective people's carrier and location. I'm in Tampa on T-Mobile and pretty much 5G everywhere with and okay amount of 5G UC.
There's lots of discussion that turning off adaptive connectivity would help people's battery life especially in poor 5G reception areas.
I'm wondering if this "adaptive connectivity" setting also sends the network to sleep altogether when the device is idle long enough. I've lately had issues with some smart home app (smartlife/tuya) not executing scheduled tasks while the phone is idle. The app itself reports to check the network, which is always fine when i do (when the device is awake). That got me to check all the power and network related controls and this adaptive connectivity is the only really new control where Google also doesn't give any insight on how it actually works. It would be helpful to get an idea of that. Just there's basically no real information on the net.
Oh and besides, i feel the battery life of the Pixel 6 pro is pretty lame actually. I guess that also pretty much depends on network availability - i work in a rural area where the network isn't great (Mobile and WiFi both not great). As long as the device is off, battery drops at an acceptable, yet not great rate. But when i activate the phone, already the screen burns down the battery so fast it's annoying me (I've already set it to 60Hz permanently). Videos, navigating, even music - all that really chews away capacity really fast. That's one reason I'd rather keep Adaptive Connectivity on. I don't want even more drain.
Sneakyghost said:
I'm wondering if this "adaptive connectivity" setting also sends the network to sleep altogether when the device is idle long enough. I've lately had issues with some smart home app (smartlife/tuya) not executing scheduled tasks while the phone is idle. The app itself reports to check the network, which is always fine when i do (when the device is awake). That got me to check all the power and network related controls and this adaptive connectivity is the only really new control where Google also doesn't give any insight on how it actually works. It would be helpful to get an idea of that. Just there's basically no real information on the net.
Oh and besides, i feel the battery life of the Pixel 6 pro is pretty lame actually. I guess that also pretty much depends on network availability - i work in a rural area where the network isn't great (Mobile and WiFi both not great). As long as the device is off, battery drops at an acceptable, yet not great rate. But when i activate the phone, already the screen burns down the battery so fast it's annoying me (I've already set it to 60Hz permanently). Videos, navigating, even music - all that really chews away capacity really fast. That's one reason I'd rather keep Adaptive Connectivity on. I don't want even more drain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My 6 pro lasts me pretty much the entire day with heavy usage. Before I charge it which is at around 9ish, I still have 17% left.
When I had it on I had lots of issues with the handoff from 5g/LTE and vice versa. Been turned off for the last 3 weeks and I just use LTE as preferred network with no issues. I do some gig work on the side and I can't be caught in the No Data limbo cuz the phone doesn't know what to do.
this is irrelevant but im comparing my wifi signal to my s21 ultra and it is pretty much the same. Same goes with my network speed
I played with adaptive connectivity and power and network settings a little more and got my SmartLife/Tuya to execute in background. It wasn't killed by adaptive connectivity, that does not seem to interfere with apps in this way at least. Seems to really rather deal with better handoffs between networks and not much more.

Modify LTE modem firmware to reduce drain with weak signal

The main reason for very high idle drain for an Exynos S20 comes from the 4/5G modem, which when having a weak mobile network signal drains the battery for some reason.
I have heard someone say it has a faulty driver or something, and so I was wondering if it is governed by a separate kernel, driver or ROM-like software?
If yes, would it be possible to modify it in such a way that would reduce idle drain with weak signal?

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