4G Phones Are Really Fast — At Draining Batteries

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4G Phones Are Really Fast — At Draining Batteries

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 7, 2012 @03:11PM from the buzzwords-take-a-lot-of-juice dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "With Verizon's 4G network covering a good chunk of the country and AT&T gaining ground, more smartphone users have access to the fastest wireless service available. But because 4G coverage isn't truly continuous in many locations, users' batteries are taking a big hit with 4G, as phones spend an lot of battery power trying to hunt down a signal. 'You've got a situation where the phones are sending out their signals searching and searching for a 4G tower, and that eats up your battery,' says Carl Howe, a vice president for research firm Yankee Group. The spottiness of 4G stems at least in part from the measured approach carriers have taken to it, rolling out the service city by city. There are a few tricks 4G users can try to extend battery life such as turning off your 4G connection when you don't need the fastest speeds — when using email, for instance — or using a program such as JuiceDefender to search for apps you may have downloaded that you don't need to run all the time, and erase them."

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truly breaking reporting by Trepidity · 2012-02-07 15:13 · Score: 4, Informative

Newest Generation of Consumer Electronics Item Uses More Energy Than Previous Generation Did

--
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
1. Re:truly breaking reporting by snowgirl · 2012-02-07 15:43 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The hard core android fan brags about having four cores in their phone, even if everything they're doing could easily be handled by a single core, gets its battery drained four times faster, and doesn't have a noticable performance improvement over the competition.
  You mean, "even though their phone just turns off the three other cores 95% of the time anyways". And in fact, some even turn off all four cores, and switch over to a super power-saving core that has especially low performance, but is well enough to play music and HW-decoded video.
  
  --
  WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
2. Re:truly breaking reporting by larry+bagina · 2012-02-07 15:47 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Umm, the standard fapple rebuttal to "my android phone has 4G!" is that 4G is a battery hog and Apple is more concerned with battery life.
  
  --
  Do you even lift?
  These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
3. Re:truly breaking reporting by demonlapin · 2012-02-07 15:50 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  The iPhone - and it really was the first in this category - got people to charge their phone every single night. Since then people have understood that part of the price you pay for having a smartphone instead of a RAZR (or one of the beasts that had a really long battery life - I had a dumpy looking Moto phone that could easily get ten days of standby if I didn't use it much) is that you have to charge it every night. As long as it gives a full 9-10 hours, most people don't care. If I can get 16 hours without a charge under heavy call/text use, I'm fine.
4. Re:truly breaking reporting by anubi · 2012-02-07 16:09 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Consider the marketing angle... that's where the money is.
  
  The people who are opening their wallet to buy are after the snazziest technology they can get. Bragging rights. By golly, they want to have something that everybody else doesn't have.
  
  Lamborghini did not make their profits from their mileage numbers. Anyone who can afford their cars would probably reconsider their purchase if the car failed to pass everything they meet on the freeway.
  
  So the phone won't run an hour between charges... who cares? The guy has already bought spare battery packs and charging apparatus. The phone has already served its purpose if it impressed the hell out of his co-workers during the call in the conference room.
  
  These phones are not designed for the same market that goes to Wal-Mart for jeans.
  
  --
  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
5. Re:truly breaking reporting by snowgirl · 2012-02-07 16:26 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Oh definitely, but for example the Tegra3 despite having four cores shuts them all down most of the time, and runs a 5th power-saving core. All of this is done silently behind the scenes, and so they never know that they're usually only running on a low-power efficiency core, rather than the roaring engine in the back.
  It's like having a two-cylinder engine that is used during stop-and-go traffic (you know, the majority of what you do during your commute) that allows you to drive your Ferrari down to the store without having to fill up on gas on the way back home. But any time you have to impress someone, and pull out the e-peen, then you can just "drop the hammer" and the engine switches over to the high-performance v12, and you go "ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
  It's definitely all about marketing. This is the best way that they could come up with to let you have your cake and eat it, too... "it has 4 cores, _AND_ it has excellent battery life! *mumbling under breath* because it is almost always running on an economy core unless you're showing off..."
  
  --
  WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
6. Re:truly breaking reporting by Belial6 · 2012-02-07 16:55 · Score: 2
  
  Sounds like a brilliant design.
7. Re:truly breaking reporting by garyebickford · 2012-02-07 17:02 · Score: 2
  
  I'm still running my five-year-old Treo 650. For most of that time I've had to charge it almost every night. But last summer the vendor (Nokia) that supplied email support to Verizon turned it off, so I couldn't receive email any more. Now I can go three or four days between charges! :)
  
  --
  It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
8. Re:truly breaking reporting by ozmanjusri · 2012-02-07 17:23 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Sounds like a brilliant design.
  In many ways, it's simply a logical next step - see Nvidia's white paper for architectural details. http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_90715.html
  Thing is, we're so used to minimal innovation in the stagnant Wintel-controlled X86 world, the rapid pace of change in ARM systems is exciting. Imagine a beowulf cluster of them, for example...
  http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/11/the-opposite-of-virtualization-calexdas-new-quad-core-arm-part-for-cloud-servers.ars
  
  --
  "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
9. Re:truly breaking reporting by Jeff+DeMaagd · 2012-02-07 18:02 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  My parents had to charge their Nextel phones every day or risk a dead phone on the second day.
  I do charge my iPhone every day out of habit because I tend to forget once in a while, and if I forget two days in a row, I might be in trouble.
  You might think iPhone started it, but people got in the habit of charging smart phones, regardless of brand, and this was before iPhone was available.
10. Re:truly breaking reporting by YoopDaDum · 2012-02-07 21:41 · Score: 2
  
  It depends. For a given fixed amount of work that scales well over several thread, the multicores CPU will finish the job earlier and go to sleep faster. Even if you had the same implementation efficiency, going to sleep (power gating) earlier is a win as you save the leakage power. But in practice newest CPUs are also made on newer and more power efficient process than older, lower cores implementation. So you win also on that part.
  
  The gotcha in this nice story is that it's only true for a fixed amount of work. If you start to do more, then you can increase the load up to a point where the load increase more than compensates for the limited efficiency gain. And then your power consumption increases.
  
  Bottom line: whether a fancy multi-cores CPU will save or eat battery will really depend on your usage pattern. YMMV.
  
  By the way, the same really apply to 4G vs. 3G vs. 2G (I thought I might touch about this too, as it's the topic of the thread ;). Each new generation is MORE power efficient in term of energy per bit transferred. No contest there. But people tend to use the network much more, and more than over compensate for the efficiency gain.
  One caveat thought: the statement above applies once you're connected. The issue described here is due to a power inefficient scanning while the device is looking for 4G, and it's a different thing. But this part can be improved too over time. And will cease to be a problem when 4G is more widely deployed (youth problem).
11. Re:truly breaking reporting by kelemvor4 · 2012-02-08 00:50 · Score: 2
  
  Oh definitely, but for example the Tegra3 despite having four cores shuts them all down most of the time, and runs a 5th power-saving core. All of this is done silently behind the scenes, and so they never know that they're usually only running on a low-power efficiency core, rather than the roaring engine in the back.
  It's like having a two-cylinder engine that is used during stop-and-go traffic (you know, the majority of what you do during your commute) that allows you to drive your Ferrari down to the store without having to fill up on gas on the way back home. But any time you have to impress someone, and pull out the e-peen, then you can just "drop the hammer" and the engine switches over to the high-performance v12, and you go "ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
  It's definitely all about marketing. This is the best way that they could come up with to let you have your cake and eat it, too... "it has 4 cores, _AND_ it has excellent battery life! *mumbling under breath* because it is almost always running on an economy core unless you're showing off..."
  You don't know how good that car analogy is here. Honda's minivans have 6 cylinders and the computer will disable 3 of the 6 as needed to achieve better fuel economy without sacrificing performance when you need it. Of course "performance" on a minivan is relative, but you get the point.
12. Re:truly breaking reporting by zmollusc · 2012-02-08 01:22 · Score: 2
  
  Pah! My Nokia n95 predated the iphone and needed charging every night and topping up whenever possible during the day. On the plus side, (for additional reasons of crappitude) it made choosing phones easier in the future as i no longer considered nokia products. Just like LG did with my 910 Renoir and RIM did with whatever Blackberry I had (battery life on blackberry was ok as it couldn't do anything).
  Sorry. Got sidetracked into ranting about crappy phones.
  
  --
  They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Very frustrating by jpwilliams · 2012-02-07 15:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm in SF, and I upgraded from an iPhone 3G to a HTC Thunderbolt with 4G. The Thunderbolt, even brand new, has to be charged twice a day at least, and I keep things like Bluetooth and wifi off most of the time. If I don't plug in my phone at night, it will be dead by morning.
Coming from someone who carefully manages when I plug my electronics in so as to extend their usable battery life, it sucks to have to feel like my phone always needs to be plugged in.
Is the 4g tech itself power hungry? Mine seems to have battery trouble even when I'm stationery and the 4g signal is strong.
1. Re:Very frustrating by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 15:33 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Coming from someone who carefully manages when I plug my electronics in so as to extend their usable battery life, it sucks to have to feel like my phone always needs to be plugged in.
  >
  
  Take your nickel-chemistry assumptions about how to treat a battery out back and shoot them. There's this new battery tech called lithium-ion -- perhaps you've heard of it>? -- used in a few devices (by which I mean everything), and it does not like discharge cycles, especially deep discharges. Keep it plugged in.
2. Re:Very frustrating by metalmaster · 2012-02-07 15:39 · Score: 2
  
  Unfortunately the HTC Thunderbolt, one of the first attempts at a 4G handset in the US, is plagued with battery issues. A quick Google search shows that it's not just you. There are also many things you can do to try to extend the battery life such as using a resource manager like JuiceDefender that aggressively manages your radios and display options when not in use. You can also use the phone's built-in power saving mode which can be found in your phone's settings menu. This will perform the same task in a less aggressive manner.
  I used Verizon's other 4G-launch handset, the Samsung Droid Charge, and regularly got about a day and a half out of the battery. I could stretch to 2 days orso with less use. After using the JuiceDefender app I was able to get a solid 3 days. However, this was a different handset from a different manufacturer YMMV.
3. Re:Very frustrating by SlashdotOgre · 2012-02-07 16:08 · Score: 2
  
  Interesting, I work in downtown SF and live in the East Bay and have no problem getting a full day out of a charge on my Tbolt. I picked up the phone around launch, and on the original stock firmware, battery life was pretty abysmal. I'm currently running a custom rom (Liquid Thunderbread 2.6), and now easily get a day on normal use (including roughly an hour of continuous browsing on BART each workday). My wife has the same phone and can get a couple days (she works in the East Bay and uses the Internet much less than I). She also uses a custom rom (Liquid Smooth 3.2), so that may be the difference (I believe both our phones use the "SMARTASS" governor and a clemsyn kernel).
  
  --
  Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
4. Re:Very frustrating by Solandri · 2012-02-07 17:40 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Is the 4g tech itself power hungry? Mine seems to have battery trouble even when I'm stationery and the 4g signal is strong.
  Most 4G tech is using OFDMA. It achieves higher data rates than CDMA by using heavier signal processing to extract the data signal destined for your phone out of all phones in a cell. Previously this processing required too much power for a mobile device. But low-power CPU tech has advanced enough to where it's realistic to use it on a phone. As processor power requirements drop, the power needed for 4G will likewise drop.
5. Re:Very frustrating by jpwilliams · 2012-02-07 19:00 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Hate to say it, but I just got served!
  http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
  Good article. I thought it was bad to keep it plugged in and good to let it run. Turns out it's the opposite!
  Anyone know if the same applies for laptops?
6. Re:Very frustrating by norpy · 2012-02-07 19:44 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The power usage of an LCD is by far dominated by the creation of light, the number of pixels will increase power consumption but not by anywhere near as much as the bigger back light.
I miss the good old days by Freaky+Spook · 2012-02-07 15:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

Where your phone would last a week on stand-by and you wouldn't have to hang around the single power socket in the airport departure lounge with all the other smartphone junkies waiting to charge your phone.
1. Re:I miss the good old days by QuasiSteve · 2012-02-07 15:27 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  You mean you miss the good old days where your phone was just a phone and texting capabilities was a luxury?
  Because you know they still sell those, right? And those now get two weeks to a month.
  Let's face it, the reason our fancy phones with internet, apps, etc. don't last very long is two-fold...
  1. They do use more power - not much you can do about that right now unless you want to give up the capabilities again.
  2. We keep wanting smaller and/or thinner phones. I promise you that if people would accept a phone half an inch thick again, battery life would be much improved - simply by virtue of being able to fit a much, much greater capacity battery.
2. Re:I miss the good old days by Ayanami_R · 2012-02-07 15:46 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I would gladly take a "bulky" device with a ton of battery. I don't understand the the tablet manufacturers all trying to copy the thinness of the fruit product. Keep them relatively slim, but kill em on battery life. Take the transformer, it's thin enough and light enough. Now that they CAN make it slimmer than the fruit product DONT, fill the space with frigging battery!
  
  --
  "Science is the power of man"
3. Re:I miss the good old days by Erikderzweite · 2012-02-07 23:45 · Score: 2
  
  Except that I have an HTC Wildfire and there are plenty of bulky rear-panels to fit a larger battery. On the plus side, I don't have to dismantle my phone with special tools, battery is replaceable, hard to imagine, isn't it?
  So I usually have an extra battery and replace it if needed every second day. I charge the batteries with external charger only, that way my phone always stays mobile.
  Best thing is, if I'd ever want to do iPhone-style charging every night or so -- I still can.
Android spergs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 15:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

Remember all the trolling Android spergs on Slashdot who bashed the iPhone 4S for not having 4G? So much for that.
1. Re:Android spergs by larry+bagina · 2012-02-07 15:52 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  That's right. They should ignore the 37 million iPhones sold last quarter and bet it all on the advice of a dipshit posting anonymously on an internet message board.
  
  --
  Do you even lift?
  These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
2. Re:Android spergs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 18:16 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Given a choice between having a feature you can turn on and off at will, and not having the feature, the better choice is always having the feature. An iPhone 4S with 4G would've had exactly the same battery life as the 4G-less iPhone 4S, but you would've been able to get 4G data speeds whenever you felt the tradeoff in battery life was worth it.
  
  And how many of the gazillion people who bought iPhones would understand, much less remember, to do that?
  My dad can't remember turn his iPad's 3G receiver to save power when he's home on wi-fi. Fortunately for him, the 3G modem is pretty efficient and the darned thing still runs all day and all night on a charge.
  Apple has calculated that the no-fret longer battery life from a mature 3G chipset will result in happier customers in aggregate than the occasional speed boost of early 4G chipsets. I have zero doubt that Apple's calculus is accurate here. People don't like having to turn features off to get things to work well.
keeping 4g off should be automatic by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-07 15:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

The phones should really keep 4g off (& just stick to edge) unless you actually unlock your phone & start using network apps (e.g. you open mail, etc). Leave push notifications always on the most battery-efficient network available (wifi, edge, 3g, 4g, etc) & only turn on the faster networks when the apps are in focus & need them (e.g. browser, e-mail, etc) or if there's a background app that requests to use the highest-bandwidth connection available.
yes, yes - there's a latency to turning on & associating the faster radio. however, that would only be noticed in the launch first bandiwdth-heavier app after phone unlock scenario. your standby time would be waaaay better.
4G = bye bye battery by markdavis · 2012-02-07 15:25 · Score: 2

My first experience with 4G was early last year in Richmond on Sprint. Indeed it was fast, but I could almost watch my battery disappear! (OK, it wasn't THAT bad, but I estimated it cut my battery life in half). It was very handy to have the Android widget right on the first page to toggle 4G on/off, so it would shift back into the much more battery-friendly 3G.
I do wish battery technology was on the same curve as CPU technology has been. Imagine- we could have super-smart phones that were twice as fast as now, but running on one charge a week or less. (Or perhaps we could finally have some good electric car range WITH great performance at the same time). Oh well, maybe in "5 to 7 years" or whatever the standard is for anything we still can't have...
1. Re:4G = bye bye battery by TubeSteak · 2012-02-07 15:44 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  TFA talks about the Droid Razr Maxx's crazy long standby, talk, and video playing time. Its secret isn't any secret at all.
  They took the dangerously thin Droid Razr, added less than 2mm in thickness, and then filled that space with a battery almost twice as large.
  3300 mAh vs the smart phone standard of ~1700 mAh.
  Designers refuse to make phones thicker in order to accommodate larger batteries.
  The Razr can get away with it because, for it, "thicker" is the normal size of other phones.
  
  --
  [Fuck Beta]
  o0t!
Re:enormous battery FTW by quacking+duck · 2012-02-07 15:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

The fact you're on coast-to-coast flights (5-ish hours) should actually *increase* battery life for that charge, since you're in airplane mode and it's not hunting for cell or wifi signals.
You're probably watching video or playing games more during the flight than you'd be running around on the ground of course, but I'm amazed how little battery is used when I watch an hour-long show on my iPhone while on the gym machines--less than 5% drained. For comparison, browsing the web or using Facebook for 30 minutes on the bus will eat 10%.
Not so fast by MrEricSir · 2012-02-07 15:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'm typing this on a MacBook Air, which gets about 3x the battery life of my previous laptop. And the room I'm in has CFL bulbs which are about 1/4 as power hungry as the old fashioned bulbs.
So no, newer electronics don't *always* use more power.

--
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
1. Re:Not so fast by YoopDaDum · 2012-02-07 21:53 · Score: 2
  
  Now the reason LTE phones use more power then HSPA phones is that the LTE transmitter is not integral to the SoC, it is it's own chip. Once the new ARM line is released (mid this year IIRC) we'll see battery life improve significantly as LTE chips will be integrated into the SoC like HSPA chips currently are.
  No, that's not a significant factor here. The modem and RF are very unlikely to be integrated into the same die as the AP, as their life-cycle are quite different. At best it's integrated in the same package, but not in the same die (as in the SnapDragon chips). That's a bit more power efficient (shortest connections between AP and BB/RF), but it's negligible compared to the power consumption of a radio access subsystem.
  
  One of the issue with each new WAN technology is that each major generation greatly increases the amount of computations to do. A standard as LTE is made to span years, and it's initially dimensioned to make the most of what's possible. So early implementations are large and power hungry. Then Moore's law (new processes power efficiency increases really) helps you get this down to a reasonable amount, up to a point where the power is dominated by the RF and PA, and no longer by the digital domain. And then the next beefier standard is introduced ;)
  
  The current 4G implementations are quite naturally power hogs. 28 nm will help. The thing is, more expensive versions of 4G will arrive soon (LTE Advanced). And that will increase the power consumption again. This time it looks like the power load may increase faster than better process can significantly help, so implementation efficiency will matter. But there's a lot to do there.
2. Re:Not so fast by blueg3 · 2012-02-08 03:02 · Score: 2
  
  Your macbook cant do what an old P4 Laptop couldn't.
  Bullshit. Unless, as the rest of your comment suggests, the specific application you're interested in has basically no CPU demand and is entirely performed by the graphics card. Even the M-series Core i5 (what's in the newest Air) outperforms a P4 and the SSD on an Air certainly outperforms a P4-era hard drive. So that's two components of "everything else" that are not worse.
  
  To elaborate, the Intel graphics chip in your laptop is integrated into the CPU die, so it's powered from the same source as the CPU rather then being a seperate chip with a seperate power supply, do you honestly think you'll be getting the same battery life if you had a discrete graphics card?
  Even discrete graphics cards share a power supply, although that's not what makes them more power-hungry. However, unless you know which Macbook Air he has, you don't know if it has Intel HD 3000 (which is on-die) or one of the nVidia mobile chips (which isn't). The older nVidia models got comparable battery life.
Apple again by goombah99 · 2012-02-07 16:08 · Score: 2, Insightful

Wow this same story keeps happening. Apple elects to go with 2G edge instead of 3G. Gets ridiculed. The all the 3G phones have connection problems and drain their batteries. Apple delays 4G. Gets pilloried. Oops the 4G phones are suck and regret. It's not that apple is always later to the party. Indeed they are a realtively early adopter (dynamic memory, graphic printers, .... ) and an early dropper of obsolete tech (floppies, zip drives, ports...).
Like Paul Mason, they only serve their wine when it is time.

--
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
1. Re:Apple again by Baloroth · 2012-02-07 16:20 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  The battery life problem, if you bothered to read even the summary instead of jumping to the comments to defend Apple, is because there isn't regular 4G coverage everywhere yet. In order for there to be an incentive to develop such widespread coverage, there must also be people willing to use that network (no massive network can be established entirely without users.) This means the only way good 4G coverage can ever happen is if there are issues with it in the early life cycle, and without those early adopters widespread 4G will never happen.
  So, without Android adopting 4G, Apple would never be able to follow suit, unless they want to receive the same complaints. Not that that would stop them, necessarily. Did you like all those dropped calls with the early iPhone because you were stuck on AT&T?
  
  --
  "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
2. Re:Apple again by tlhIngan · 2012-02-07 18:26 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  So, without Android adopting 4G, Apple would never be able to follow suit, unless they want to receive the same complaints. Not that that would stop them, necessarily. Did you like all those dropped calls with the early iPhone because you were stuck on AT&T?
  
  Two different issues.
  First, Apple chose not to go LTE for one very good reason - the current LTE chipsets suck.
  Here's the thing. LTE is a data standard. It doesn't define a voice standard, and there's proposals on how to do voice-over-LTE. And people want to do voice calls. So LTE phones right now hop onto the UMTS (or CDMA) network in order to handle a voice call, while doing LTE for data. The problem is that LTE phones now need two chips - one to do LTE, another to do 3G/voice (ever notice how the LTE versions of phones are always larger? It's not just the larger battery). The iPhone doesn't have enough space for another chip. Plus the extra chip takes power.
  Now, Qualcomm has announced their roadmap that has a combined LTE/UMTS/GSM/CDMA baseband (listed as LTE+voice) in a single chip, which is anticipated to be in the next iPhone.
  As for AT&T's dropped calls - it was because of over-aggressive power management from iPhones causing the control channel to be congested (which leads to dropped calls everwyhere in general). The irony being that the cells on AT&T were very underutilized (30-40%) but the control channel being completely saturated means dropped calls, slow data and other things.
  As for who drives things - well, the carriers work with handset manufacturers. The carriers want to deploy the Next Big Thing that can charge customers more money for, and since Apple's basically an untouchable (the carrier bends to Apple's will), they work with HTC and others to stick in new chips to try to get people to pay more for a new network.
  LTE deployment is quite interesting. When the (original 2G) iPhone came out, the 3G deployment in North America was quite spotty (the North American carriers chose 2G+ technolgies prior to the proper 3G rollout), but quite solid in Europe and Asia. These days, LTE deployment in North America is far more than Europe and Asia
3. Re:Apple again by petermgreen · 2012-02-07 23:06 · Score: 2
  
  They don't want the best effort internet traffic to swamp the premium voice traffic. So if they want to go full VOIP they need to build QOS into every aspect of the network. Further they have to work out how you will handle phones switching mid call from 4G voip to 2G/3G circuit switched voice when they go out of 4G coverage. Finally all the carriers and phone vendors need to agree on this so it can be incorporated into mass market phones.
  Plus even if they do get voice over 4G sorted they will still need the 2G/3G functionality so the phone works in areas without 4G network coverage.
  
  --
  note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Happened to me by XahXhaX · 2012-02-07 16:15 · Score: 2

Within a month of buying my iPhone last year, we went camping. I put a lot of effort into preserving the battery so I could test out the compass feature the following morning and take photos all day. I didn't realize that in being unable to find a signal, it would _continuously attempt it_ all night. I had about 90% battery when we went to bed, woke up to about 5%. I was pretty unhappy with this discovery, where I previously figured they were smarter than that.
Re:another trick? by pspahn · 2012-02-07 16:30 · Score: 2

What about having a fusion reactor with you
While not quite that, at least the name is right... Voltaic Fuse
Personally, I have given up on smart phones and have opted to carry a Clear Spot 4G wifi hotspot with me. I'm currently using my out-of-plan Evo with Google Voice and GrooveIP. While the audio could be better, it works, and it's $50/mo for all I can eat 4G that I can plug into my desktop, laptop, wifi for the Android, and it's even allowed me to keep working at work when everyone else's Internet is down because there was an accident that took out power to the entire downtown block.
This is the future... where you just pay for Internet that you can bring anywhere* and instead of getting a cell phone from some provider, you just use an Android device with wifi or an iPod touch along with Google Voice.
There's definitely at least a few telcos that Google will put out of business if they ever developed Voice into what it should be.

--
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Wrong, upgrades would happen anyway by SuperKendall · 2012-02-07 16:59 · Score: 2

So, without Android adopting 4G, Apple would never be able to follow suit
This is simply incorrect.
The network would be upgraded with or without early adoption. The early adoption does help shake out issues (thanks as usual Android Beta Testers!) but a phone company lays out way in advance the capital required to upgrade the whole network, they are not going to be so insane as to rely on adoption in a few early cities to fund the rest of the expansion. It's just that the upgrade takes time, and as we see it takes time for the chipsets to get good as well.
They are actually more the issue, the network will be upgraded when the network provider decides it is time but the chipset makers have to feel like there's enough of a market to build against.

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1. Re:Wrong, upgrades would happen anyway by Bazer · 2012-02-07 19:30 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I'm in Central Europe and there has been complete 4G coverage in major cities before Apple even considered using it in the next iPhone. These days I can get 4G coverage in the outback (and I do need my tubes to be HD in there). Please don't excuse carriers in the US for not upgrading the infrastructure. They're robbing you blind.
Not true by SuperKendall · 2012-02-07 17:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

The iPhone - and it really was the first in this category - got people to charge their phone every single night.
That's not the case.
I've had and iPhone since the first one, and I've usually only gone to charge it every three days or so. That's with moderate email/web/app use.
It's less time than other dumb phones but much more time than smart phones of the time (like Treo or Windows Mobile) offered. The realistic multi-day battery life was a huge draw early on, exactly because finally there was a smart phone you DIDN'T have to charge every day.

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Re:Not true by SuperKendall · 2012-02-07 18:22 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  As I said I use my phone daily. I currently have an iPhone 4 (not 4s) and I only plug it in to charge about every three days. Again, this is moderate web/email/app use (I don't make many calls either).
  I think the 4 is somewhat better charge-wise than the 3Gs (which I also had).
  At this point the 3Gs battery may simply be getting weaker, you could have it replaced fairly cheaply.
  
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  "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The price of being an early adopter ... by MacTO · 2012-02-07 17:08 · Score: 2

This sounds like the cost of being an early adopter. The infrastructure isn't in place yet, so you have to expend more power establishing and maintaining a signal. Assuming that 4G goes mainstream, things will probably be significantly better in a few years.
Remember, these critters are radios and omnidirectional ones at that. Halving the distance to a tower will roughly quarter the required transmit power.
Re:When camping, use airplane mode. by AdamHaun · 2012-02-07 18:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

I've never understood why a receive-only technology is disabled by something meant to stop emission of radio waves...
Radio receivers use a local oscillator to demodulate the signal. This oscillator can radiate interference. Here's some more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheterodyne_receiver#Local_oscillator_radiation

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Slashvertisment by UnresolvedExternal · 2012-02-07 21:43 · Score: 2

Comon guys - Isn't this just a blatant JuiceDefender Slashvertisment? The issue may be real but I feel the shill count may have gone up by one...
Signal strength by Kupfernigk · 2012-02-07 22:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

I suspect this is an infrastructure issue. Phones need to use more power to talk where the tower signal is weak. My wife's phone goes days without needing recharge (strong signal for her carrier) while my company BB only lasts two days (weak O2 signal at home, stronger at work) and needs a daily charge in rural Devon where the signal is frequently missing.

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Here's an idea. by MMC+Monster · 2012-02-07 23:06 · Score: 2

I'm surprised if someone hasn't patented this already. It's sure obvious enough:
0. Download an app with the current 4G hot spots in the country
1. Use GPS/map to remember 4G hot spots.
2. Use 3G triangulation (which is always available) to see if you're near a 4G hot spot.
3. If you're near a 4G hot spot, look for 4G.
4. Once a day search for 4G.

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