Battery life / WiFi craziness

[SMMAssociates]

Sorry if this is the FAQ of the month, but 2 problems....

First.... I power up about 1300, give or take. (Actually, "unplug the phone from the charger".) Generally, I check e-mail via my WiFi, or use uTube for "information" or entertainment. Make (or answer) a call every couple of days. Often, by 1700 to 2200 the battery's down to 20% or less.... Charge it up and it's OK for a couple hours. If it doesn't flake earlier (or if it does), it's down to 20% or less by about 0300. Wouldn't care, but I often want to use the thing until about 0500...

The phone's about two years old, and just started doing this a few months ago....

Any ideas?

Second question: I have two WiFi networks here. One's upstairs in the bedroom wing, and one's downstairs in my office. They overlap a bit - the house isn't _that_ big, but it's a ranch, and quite a walk between routers. I like the coverage... The two routers are on different channels. The problem.... The phone often selects the _wrong_ router v.s. signal strength. If I'm down in the office, and using the router down here, and then head upstairs, I'll either find it still linked downstairs, or searching for a link. Then it picks the downstairs link.... One "bar" instead of four, or something like that.

Any ideas?

TIA

 

[Sajo]

Can you post a screenshot of your Battery stats graph? Open the Battery Settings and thrn tap the graph to show more details. Many different things can affect battery life, donors hard to say without more info.

Under Settings > WiFi > 3 dot menu > Advanced > what options are selected? Chanel? Avoid poor connection?

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

 

[doogald]

Sorry if this is the FAQ of the month, but 2 problems....

First.... I power up about 1300, give or take. (Actually, "unplug the phone from the charger".) Generally, I check e-mail via my WiFi, or use uTube for "information" or entertainment. Make (or answer) a call every couple of days. Often, by 1700 to 2200 the battery's down to 20% or less.... Charge it up and it's OK for a couple hours. If it doesn't flake earlier (or if it does), it's down to 20% or less by about 0300. Wouldn't care, but I often want to use the thing until about 0500...

The phone's about two years old, and just started doing this a few months ago....

It's probably battery fatigue. The battery is meant for a certain number of charge cycles and it's ability to hold a charge starts to deteriorate, then starts getting worse rapidly. Two years is probably close to that point.

Second question: I have two WiFi networks here. One's upstairs in the bedroom wing, and one's downstairs in my office. They overlap a bit - the house isn't _that_ big, but it's a ranch, and quite a walk between routers. I like the coverage... The two routers are on different channels. The problem.... The phone often selects the _wrong_ router v.s. signal strength. If I'm down in the office, and using the router down here, and then head upstairs, I'll either find it still linked downstairs, or searching for a link. Then it picks the downstairs link.... One "bar" instead of four, or something like that.

Unfortunately, that's likely by design. It takes power and interrupts internet connectivity to switch between access points, so Android is pretty conservative about holding an access point for as long as the connection is good enough, even if a better AP is closer. You do basically want that; imagine a scenario where it switched whenever something stronger was found, and imagine what would happen when you are halfway between APs in your house (or wherever) and it kept switching back and forth and back and forth.

As I understand it, iOS is smarter about this (less conservative about holding onto an AP) than Android is. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no setting to change this behavior (on either OS.)

You can try toggling WiFi off and on and I'll bet it will connect to the closer AP when you do move to a new location.