battery consumption of idle 2g and 3g

[kevdliu]

Does 3g really uses more battery than 2g when idle? i got conflicting views on this. i usually get 86dbm on 1x and 110dbm on 3g. could that be the cause?

thanks

 

[Gasai Yuno]

-110dBm means worse reception. At -120, there's usually no reception. 86dBm means your phone needs to spend less power to sustain the cellular link.

 

[leobg]

Even at same signal strength 2G will consume less power than 3G. My empirical testing measures about 35% lower consumption on 2G. Mind that's GSM and UMTS I'm testing with, not CDMA/EvDO. The way I measure is how long the battery lasts on 2G and on 3G with same usage (in idle - with all background sync active)

 

[Gasai Yuno]

I don't think VZW's CDMA network can actually function on 3G only without 2G; I think I read somewhere that everything related to voice communications (i.e. regular calls) and plain text messages (not MMS) is always routed via 2G.

On GSM networks, indeed, it's either pure 2G GSM with GPRS/EDGE, or pure UMTS.

 

[leobg]

I am not sure either. But there is option CDMA/EvDO CDMA only EvDO only - so I assumed it acts similarly to GSM/UMTS. I haven't bothered reading much about Verizon's network..

One thing I know for sure - their super-duper LTE network is not voice capable, at least for now. All their new LTE phones rely on CDMA to carry voice. This means 2 different radios connected at the same time all the time. What an energy saving concept..

 

[Gasai Yuno]

It's actually capable of transferring voice calls.

On UMTS and LTE alike, voice calls are transferred via the mobile data channel with its priority set to highest; there is no separate channel for voice.

 

[leobg]

UMTS is not like that, it has channel dedicated for voice, much alike ISDN. LTE is a pure data network and voice has to be carried over data much alike VoIP. But Verizon doesn't have that, yet.



Sent from my XT860 using Tapatalk

 

[Gasai Yuno]

ISDN doesn't really have a dedicated channel for voice, you can allocate ISDN data channels as you like.

 

[leobg]

Voice is still data.

Sent from my XT860 using Tapatalk

 

[myskyon]

has anyone tried to use evdo only? i have and i could not send text messages or make phone calls... also note with data turned off battery life is great 80% after 14hours made 2 20min calls and sent about 300 txt messages along with using wifi to surf the net at home... without making phone calls the battery will only loose 10% after 18hours with no evdo or 3g no sim installed ether so no gsm...

 

[leobg]

That confirms GY's note Verizon's 3G network cannot function without 2G. Unlike rival GSM/UMTS technology. Not surprised why all operators here in Canada decided to ditch the CDMA/EvDO technology. Some of them did that as far back as 2006 (Rogers).

Sent from my XT860 using Tapatalk

 

[Gasai Yuno]

EV-DO, much unlike EV-DV, is a pure data network. You can encapsulate voice data into an EV-DO channel but no carrier really does that, and handsets don't support it anyway.

Verizon Wireless uses EV-DO because it's backwards compatible with IS-95/CDMA2000.