Linked by snydeq on Wed 2nd Nov 2011 22:50 UTC
Thread beginning with comment 495637
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This one should be becoming much less of an issue (heck, 3G has some features which allow it to sleep better; 2G negotiates connections much longer; also better spectral efficiency of 3G - and sure, the radio methods used by 3g require more oomph on the handset side / processing, but they had time to mature)
Probably, she did start using everything more frugally, when instructed about the "causes" and how to turn them on only when necessary; we typically miss the many ways in which we modify our own behaviour - might work as well the other way around than the fairly usual: when people have nice 3G smartphone, they use it more.
Edited 2011-11-10 00:15 UTC




Member since:
2005-07-13
Make sure that wifi is set to remain active even when sleeping. This keeps your phone off of 3G for things like checking email etc. when your phone is at rest (ie. at home.)
If you do need to stretch the battery life throughout the day, disable 3G altogether. Makes a big difference, and edge is sufficient for background needs like email, weather updates etc. If you need bandwidth, re-enable it at will. Did this on my wife's old iPhone and it almost "doubled" the battery life (in as much as the phone was still usable the next day if she forgot to recharge it at night) with little impact on her usage. She's already complaining about battery life on her new Infuse 4G, so I'll probably do the same again.
Also do so if you're in an area with spotty or no 3G service. The radio transmitter will burn through battery juice trying to find and/or maintain a 3G signal even if there isn't one to find. I was up in the boonies on vacation this summer, and while there was cell service, 3G was spotty and my phone wasn't even lasting the day, despite not really being used. Disabling 3G fixed that nicely.
Basically, anything you can do to reduce 3G/4G usage will have a dramatic impact on battery life. On any platform.