I’m using my cell phone in my home area most of the time. What I’m fairly sure I’ve noticed is that when I’m not using the phone, but I’m in a place with a very low signal (like, the bowels of a particular new building) the battery just drains like mad.
I looked thru the board and only found one remotely related thread (here), and it only applied to roaming.
Normally, if I don’t use the phone much it will go at least 2 days before the battery indicator is at the halfway point. But in that building, it seems to drain down to that point in 4 or 5 hours even if I haven’t used it at all.
Am I imagining things, or does the poor little device have to work harder to keep in touch with the network from a low-signal location?
Pretty much, yeah. The cell network periodically sends out “Hey, where are you?” signals, and if it’s on, your phone will respond with “Here I am!”–sort of like electronic Marco Polo. If the phone senses that the incoming signal is too low, it will ramp up its output power to compensate. Additionally, the cell tower will respond with an “A-OK” when it receives the handset’s confirmation signal. If the handset doesn’t receive this (either because of local interference, too low a signal level, or the tower didn’t send one because it never received the acknowledgement) it sends out it’s “Here I am!” again. Thus, if the signal is too weak, it’ll drain your battery quite quickly.
