Why is our battery being wasted by cell standby?
- Thread starter suade907
- Start date
adammhaile
Member
- May 17, 2011
- 5
- 1
So, this just gets weirder...
I also have an A500 that actually states that it's a 3G A501 and shows "Cell Standby" all the time.
The weird this is that there seems to be no section for 3G settings in the settings panel in order to disable 3G completely.
I even tried putting the tablet into airplane mode and re-enabling WiFi and then leaving it unplugged overnight. But there was still 10% battery drain and battery status showed more than 40% was "Cell Standby"
For my phone, I've always used a widget called "Power Control Plus" (About $2 in the market, but well worth it). It has a TON of mobile data related options in it so I installed it on my tablet, then created a new widget and added one of every of the 3G related options. In the end, all of the 3G toggles and such didn't do a darn thing, and the only one that got me any where was the "2G-3G" option.
So, here's what you do... Install "Power Control Plus", then create a new 1x1 widget and configure it to use the very first item in the option drop-down called "2G-3G".
No, click on the new widget and it will bring up a new dialog that I had never been able to get to from anywhere else, "Mobile Network Settings". It's not part of the main "Settings" panel, and actually just a floating dialog, with the following controls:
"Data enabled"
"Data Roaming"
"Access Point Names"
"Network Operators"
The only one that should be checked is "Data Enabled"... uncheck that box and then back out of the dialog.
Strangely, in my testing, this didn't help unless I was also in Airplane mode (which did nothing on it's own). So, here's the settings I used.
"Data Enabled" unchecked, Airplane Mode on, GPS off (from "Location and Security" the power control widget doesn't work), "WiFi Disconnect Mode" set to never.
I left it on and unplugged for a full 24 hours, and only lost 1% battery.
When I had WiFi Disconnect set to always, it actually didn't loose any battery.
But here's the kicker... When you go to battery stats, it still shows "Cell Standby" and in my case it was at 58%!! But, not battery lose, so who cares.
I'm going to try again with GPS enabled, but from previous posts, I'm beginning to think that the key is no GPS, Data Disabled (from dialog mentioned above) AND Airplane Mode.
Also, from looking around, it seems that even some XOOM WiFi users have the same issue, so it seems that it may be a general Honeycomb issue. Maybe Google has it fixed in HC 3.1??
Anyways, hope that helps! Will keep testing different configurations every night just to be sure and report back if I find anything else of interest.
I also have an A500 that actually states that it's a 3G A501 and shows "Cell Standby" all the time.
The weird this is that there seems to be no section for 3G settings in the settings panel in order to disable 3G completely.
I even tried putting the tablet into airplane mode and re-enabling WiFi and then leaving it unplugged overnight. But there was still 10% battery drain and battery status showed more than 40% was "Cell Standby"
For my phone, I've always used a widget called "Power Control Plus" (About $2 in the market, but well worth it). It has a TON of mobile data related options in it so I installed it on my tablet, then created a new widget and added one of every of the 3G related options. In the end, all of the 3G toggles and such didn't do a darn thing, and the only one that got me any where was the "2G-3G" option.
So, here's what you do... Install "Power Control Plus", then create a new 1x1 widget and configure it to use the very first item in the option drop-down called "2G-3G".
No, click on the new widget and it will bring up a new dialog that I had never been able to get to from anywhere else, "Mobile Network Settings". It's not part of the main "Settings" panel, and actually just a floating dialog, with the following controls:
"Data enabled"
"Data Roaming"
"Access Point Names"
"Network Operators"
The only one that should be checked is "Data Enabled"... uncheck that box and then back out of the dialog.
Strangely, in my testing, this didn't help unless I was also in Airplane mode (which did nothing on it's own). So, here's the settings I used.
"Data Enabled" unchecked, Airplane Mode on, GPS off (from "Location and Security" the power control widget doesn't work), "WiFi Disconnect Mode" set to never.
I left it on and unplugged for a full 24 hours, and only lost 1% battery.
When I had WiFi Disconnect set to always, it actually didn't loose any battery.
But here's the kicker... When you go to battery stats, it still shows "Cell Standby" and in my case it was at 58%!! But, not battery lose, so who cares.
I'm going to try again with GPS enabled, but from previous posts, I'm beginning to think that the key is no GPS, Data Disabled (from dialog mentioned above) AND Airplane Mode.
Also, from looking around, it seems that even some XOOM WiFi users have the same issue, so it seems that it may be a general Honeycomb issue. Maybe Google has it fixed in HC 3.1??
Anyways, hope that helps! Will keep testing different configurations every night just to be sure and report back if I find anything else of interest.
Wow! I think you've come closer than anyone in figuring this out. Question...when you say you left it on and it lost 1% of batter, I'm guessing the screen was shut down?
Half Colin
Member
- May 10, 2011
- 12
- 1
Great write up Adam - thanks - will be watching your progress with great interest.
adammhaile
Member
- May 17, 2011
- 5
- 1
You would be correct. It was sitting on my desk, unplugged with the screen off.
On a side note though... WiFi was definitely still enabled and connected, since I actually had remotely installed 3 or 4 applications from the web version of the market while I was at work and they were installed when I checked later. So it wasn't like it was in some deep sleep mode or anything.
adammhaile
Member
- May 17, 2011
- 5
- 1
Now... who wants to bet that it will be fixed in the 3.1 update? (Not that anyone at Acer has admitted it's a problem yet.)
adammhaile
Member
- May 17, 2011
- 5
- 1
Just a quick update...
I tried the same configuration as previously stated, but this time I left GPS enabled.
It went from 99% charge to 96% overnight and still showed 47% Cell Standby.
Way better than 10-15% loss overnight... but a weird step down from with GPS disabled. Especially since there was nothing running that would use GPS.
Not that I actually ever use it on the tablet, so I guess I'll just leave it disabled for now.
I tried the same configuration as previously stated, but this time I left GPS enabled.
It went from 99% charge to 96% overnight and still showed 47% Cell Standby.
Way better than 10-15% loss overnight... but a weird step down from with GPS disabled. Especially since there was nothing running that would use GPS.
Not that I actually ever use it on the tablet, so I guess I'll just leave it disabled for now.
There is an opened bug issue concerning this problem.
Issue 17497 - android - Wi-Fi only tablets - Cell Stanby using battery resources on Honeycomb - Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project - Google Project Hosting
Please support it with your votes and comments! This way it will be noticed.
For now there is no safe way resolve it, so we need to make Google look into this.
Issue 17497 - android - Wi-Fi only tablets - Cell Stanby using battery resources on Honeycomb - Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project - Google Project Hosting
Please support it with your votes and comments! This way it will be noticed.
For now there is no safe way resolve it, so we need to make Google look into this.
HarshReality
Member
- Jun 19, 2011
- 25
- 0
Root is not 'Risky'. There is a gingerbreak exploit ATM I used and in 5 minutes had my su installed. Im tempted to try the aforementioned rename trick but while I know there is no chance of a brick the last time I tried something similar on my Moto Droid it sent it into a force close loop so Im a bit leary about that one.
TBone
Member
- Nov 19, 2010
- 22
- 0
I changed my 2 to the very same thing, but am still showing cell phone standby usage....any ideas why?
Sent from my A500
ball0fire
Member
- May 29, 2011
- 6
- 0
it might be there cos it was before, check for reduced batt drainage, thats the important part. if batt life is longer then all is good dont worry aboot what says.
i'm getting aboot 4-5 days outa mine with light use so im happy
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