I’ve had some inconsistent, and (to me) unexplainable behavior from my cell phone battery.
I knew that I would be travelling north to Maine last Saturday, so that Friday night I charged the battery. Saturday morning the battery read full. I double checked by removing the charger and reattaching. After five seconds or so of saying “Battery Charging” it switched to “Charging Completed”.*
I drove north about three or four hours. I made one call from the highway, all of a minute in duration. When I arrived at my destination, I was unpleasantly surprised to see that the battery readout had dropped from 4 bars to 1 bar. I turned the phone off and drove home the next day when I charged it again when I got home Sunday night.
It is now Friday, and cell phone is still showing 2 bars on the readout from that latest charge. It showed 3 bars until late this morning.
What could cause a phone battery to run down in one day in the first instance, and yet still stay charged for five days in the latter? Other than that brief call, there has been no difference in my behavior. In fact, I now use my phone as a clock, so I have been lighting the phone to check the time far more this week than that one day in question. The only thing that comes to mind is that cell service was very spotty up where I was. Does limited or no cell service force the phone into a more active mode? Or do I just have an idiosyncatic phone? (Motorola RAZR, if that helps).
I travel in New England a lot, and find that when I’m in an area without decent cell service the battery runs down quickly from ‘searching’ for a signal.
I’ve got a place on a mountain in central Vermont; if I leave the fully charged phone on all night, it will be 1/2 to 1/3 depleted by morning.
Your cell phone constantly communicates to the cell phone towers, so that the towers know where the phone is and whether or not it’s still turned on. If the cell phone can’t communicate or is having trouble communicating, it boosts its power until it does communicate, and this is what can drain your battery a lot faster. Also, since the phone communicates to the tower periodically even when you aren’t talking, all that is required to drain the battery is that the cell phone be turned on.
Talking will of course drain the battery faster, though.
When you are staying within your local area, the cell phone has no trouble reaching a tower on a lower power setting, and doesn’t drain the battery as much.
Thereby explaining a number of little quirks of my cell phone. Learn something new every day. Good question,** Plynck**, and good answers as well. Ignorance fought.
Another possibility if your phone has the older analog capability and switches over to a analog tower when you made your call it will drain the battery much faster then a digital signal.
Thank you, silenus. The first place I looked was the phone owner’s manual and it’s a bit surprising to me that this wasn’t referenced in the battery section.
Thanks to all for your answers.
Interestingly, I had an analog Nokia phone not long ago before my provider started to phase out that service. Lack of service had no effect on my battery life that I could see, but I don’t know if that is the same thing that you are referring to.
Since you were driving up north, it’s also worth noting that if you were using a Bluetooth headset (or if your car is Bluetooth-equipped), you would be using more power to establish simultaneous connectivity with the cell towers and Bluetooth device. My car is Bluetooth-enabled, and I’ve learned the hard way not to drive around without a phone charger.
To give you a idea of how it compares, one of my phones if the signal was digital I could talk for 30 min plus (I rarely talked over 6-8 minutes, but I think I got over 1 hour once) with a analog signal I got 4 minutes before the phone powered down due to low power. This was with a old battery and the battery did ‘recover’ after the call quite a bit (w/o recharging).
The technology is different, analog uses a few high powered towers, requiring high power to transmit to them, digital uses lower power and closer towers.