Mobile aData battery drain

peatme · May 10, 2022, 4:04am

Hello,
I am happily using e-OS on my OnePlus 6t for the past 2 weeks now and i am loving it. I do have one strange situation thought, whenever i switch to movile data my battery starts draining like crazy. I work predominantly outdoors and WiFi is rarely an option so about half the day my phone is on mobile data. For an 8 hours work day my data consumes roughly 20-25% of my battery (according to the build in analytics). I’d be usually ok if this is normal, however, couple of years ago i tried eOS again on the same phone and i was easily running it for over 25-30 hours, same phone, same job.

Is it possible to have some issues with the radio or did i miss some patch or smt?
I have scanned through all of the settings even developer options and optimised every app that needs it.

I am enjoying this deGoogled life but this issue is a bit annoying. The biggest benefit for me on the last install was the longevity of the battery and now it is unfortunately a set back. Also as i said I work outdoors so charging mid-day is not always possible, this phone also doubles as my work phone so i can’t really afford to lose charge

Thank your work and sorry about the long post

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online services phone

irrlicht · May 10, 2022, 5:10am

Check you data volume and find out where it comes from. One action which costs a lot of energy (depending on your distance to the next antenna in the cell network) is ongoing sending data like for instance synchronization. To stop this you should configure your synchronization settings to reduce it to what you need.

Polling mail servers is also a battery killer. If you request your mail servers every five minutes and your inboxes are filled up and never cleaned you will also get a lot of network traffic again and again (depends on your mail client). Configure your mail servers to use the IMAP push feature, this reduces the entire traffic to one very short handshake every some ten minutes.

Generally reduce screen brightness to 75%. Switch off Bluetooth, NFC and GPS (as long as you don’t need it, that’s by far most of the time).

peatme · May 10, 2022, 7:16am

thank you for the quick reply.
The advice you are giving is on point and it does work. Unfortunately I’ve already done all of it and still my data is a battery gobler. I don’t have an email app apart from my work outlook one, which is already configured. I’ve just installed glasswire to monitor the data consumption, hopefully theres a hidden one that causes the issue.

I’m attaching a screenshot of my bat consumption and it is weird to have my mobile data as a primary consumer

aibd · May 10, 2022, 7:39am

You have said that mobile data is the culprit. If you were to use the phone for a significant time

mobile data off; compared with
mobile date on

Does the value Mobile network standby remain so high?

I am thinking that standby seems a Mobile network issue, and not any other app involved? … or am I missing something?

smu44 · May 10, 2022, 7:54am

Also, you may try to change the “Preferred network type” (choose one starting with the type that fits better your coverage, for example LTE for 4G).

aibd · May 10, 2022, 9:21am

The approach by @smu44 seems good.
Perhaps there is “not any other app involved” – as it is not getting through !

peatme · May 10, 2022, 9:36am

@aibd i did try it with and without data,.yes the difference is huge.

@smu44 this is a very good idea and something i never thought about. I just switched to an option with less variables

and i guess this will give results in a day or two.
Thank you all for the help, I’ll keep you poated if there is a change.

Also is it normal for the data to automatically switch off during calls and can i set it not to do that?

smu44 · May 10, 2022, 9:39am

Yes, it is.
Depending on your network provider, your device may have to fall back to 3G/3G+ during calls.

irrlicht · May 10, 2022, 11:46am

BTW: the same network traffic should also occur using a wifi network, the type of network doesn’t matter. To use a wifi environment would be a good constellation for analyzing the traffic, because the router can probably log this very detailed. So it should be easy to see which servers are requested outside. Perhaps even the responsible app could be determined.

marcdw · May 10, 2022, 12:08pm

Y’know, I was just thinking about this subject recently. “Mobile Data: The forgotten battery drainer”.

My job is walking distance from my house but the signal there doesn’t seem all that great. I take my OnePlus 8T to work for those times i want to check out trailers and whatnot for the job. It may sit for hours (it’s not my daily driver). When I do get to it it feels warmish and battery drain is evident. I’ve seen it drop down to H+ so I knew it had signal issues. Same doesn’t happen at home. There is a T-Mobile tower two buildings over but can’t say that’s the positive factor.

Anyway, I was thinking about the “old days” when if someone was suffering from drain, one of the questions would be how is your cell signal.

Android, up to and including Nougat, would have a nice visual representation in the Battery History (obtained by tapping on the battery graph). The cell signal was represented by colors: green for good down to red for bad. It also showed when your phone was awake, when wi-fi was used, when screen was on, and even GPS.

So when I was thinking about this subject, my daily driver Nougat ROM showed a lot of yellow and even a red spot. This tells me my signal wasn’t so great during a certain time period and location (at work I think). One could also compare the flow in the battery graph with the colored items below.

I was going to take a screenshot for use in another post before recharging and forgot. The screenshot below is just to show what I wish Google hadn’t removed from Android. It was really useful. Day off yesterday, staying at home, so signal is pretty good. Not a bunch of yellow or red that I had before.
Used to use Better Battery Stats to check my signal quality on Oreo and Pie (I think). Me thinks it’s time to find a tool to see what’s up on the Android 11 phone when I take it to work.

But yeah, cell signal quality plays a big part when it comes to battery.

peatme · May 10, 2022, 6:13pm

Hello, im back with some results. Long story short nothing really works and it is most likely a problem with the modem. Any idea how to reflash it and if it is going to work with eOS?
I know nothing about modems and am a bit worried that i might ruin all the work i put into my eOS

aibd · May 10, 2022, 6:25pm

First, I thought I do not remember OnePlus 6t as a problem device, then I ran this search Search results for 'OnePlus 6t order:latest' - /e/ community.

I would first like to assume this was a carrier issue ! If you keep sending requests for service and they are not handling them, they will know (but maybe not tell you).

Which exact model and devicecode do you have ? What carrier are you using ?

Did you perform your /e/ install from a fully updated device ?

Assuming Info about OnePlus 6T - fajita

peatme · May 10, 2022, 9:09pm

no… and i learned that the hard way.
So long story short i spend 4 hours reinstalling original latest Oxygen OS and then did the whole eOS one again. Lost all my settings and work so far but i think that solved the problem.
I was running an old version of Oxygen (android 9) and then jumped to e OS android 11.
DIdnt even consider that i needed the latest one.
However after going through all that i found a nice and simple thread on XDA:

Explaining how to reflash specific aspects of the firmware.
I could’ve flashed the modem and be done with it but such is life.
Again thank you for all your help and i hope this thread is going to be useful to future users