High battery drainage Xperia 10 III

Bug Reports
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#359

I suspect it may have something to do with specific 4G bands, especially those high frequency ones like 2.1 GHz, 2.6 GHz or 3.8 GHz. Not only the cells of those bands are smaller (and in case of 3.8 GHz really small) than in case of typical 2G and 3G frequencies like 900 MHz or 1800/1900 MHz, but additionally the signal is more prone to obstacles, which further reduces its range. The result is that in certain situations there is A LOT of switching between neighbouring cells and between bands. Using e.g. CellMon you can observe how your phone sometimes switches between several neighbouring base stations, or between different bands of the same cell (e.g. 2100 MHz and 2600 MHz) like crazy, e.g. every 10-20 seconds or so. And when those switches take place, I often see corresponding momentary power consumption spikes. I also suspect that this is something that prevents the device from sleeping as it needs to constantly interact with the mobile network.

I did not have those problems when I lived in a location away from city center where 800 and 900 MHz 4G bands were mostly used. Last year I moved to the city center and now with 2.1 and 2.6 GHz bands being used I have this problem nearly all the time.

#360

Thanks, I will check further. Not that I can do anything about it but perhaps it can be useful info for Jolla.

No chance for switching between cells where I live though. I have exactly one single tower in range around here in the woods.

#361

So maybe in your case it’s switching between different bands served by the same BTS. The same single base station usually serves multiple bands. E.g. the one I am connected to at the very moment (ECID 287989) serves like 24 separate channels of two different mobile networks (T-Mobile PL and Orange PL, they have an agreement to share network resources).

http://btsearch.pl/szukaj.php?mode=std&search=287989

When e.g. the 1900 or 2100 MHz signal becomes too weak or too disturbed, switching to a lower frequency band (if available) takes place, e.g. to 900 or 800 MHz. And then back, if the higher band’s signal strength and quality are again considered good enough. And so on. It looks that in some areas it may happen very often. It’s probably good for the network, but definitely not so good for the phone’s power consumption.

#362

Oh dear, Dna just shut down 3g I think. Goodbye low power consumption.

#363

So now I have done some more testing and I can say for sure that I don’t see the frequent band och cell switching that wetab73 noticed. At home I am stable on band 20 / 800mhz with quite poor reception (status rssi ~22% & cell rssi ~35%). In the city there is different bands and much higher reception of course and it does switch sometimes but not very often, can not be the cause by itself for drainage.

Both at home and in the city battery drainage lies between -250 to -270 mA with screen on and no active usage. Turning on flight mode cause drainage to immediately drop to between -130 to -150 mA. In other words: having active 4G cause power usage to approximately double.

I don’t have test data for 2G/3G since that’s shut down here now but I am certain I noticed the drainage at the same time they shut down the old networks. I remember I tried everything to figure out why the phone suddenly consumed so much power before finally realizing in coincided with the network change.

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#364

As I wrote, in certain conditions (usually at nights and on weekends) power consumption on 4G drops to 110-130 mA, and then further lowers to 30-60 mA when the device is idle and the display turns off, which doesn’t really differ much from 2G power consumption. And it can stay so for hours. Then it suddenly goes back to 200-300 mA and remains so even when display is turned off. And it can take hours before it again drops to low levels, eating battery like crazy. There are no active processes with any increased CPU usage, so it must be the radio part eating that energy.

Anyway, it’s really difficult to tell what’s causing it. Maybe even without the actual cell/band switching taking place, in certain conditions (maybe depending on momentary signal strength or quality, or current mobile network “load” - quantity of subscribers momentarily using that specific cell/band vs. its capacity) a lot of “talking” between the phone and the network is taking place and prevents the phone (at least its baseband/modem part) from idling and reducing power consumption. Such explanation would actually correspond with the times at which I usually see lower power consumption (mostly at nights), i.e. periods of time when there’s a much lower mobile network load (less active subscribers, less traffic), less interferences, etc.

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#365

Had same problems as others here, but it turned out half of it is my SIM card. I used SIM from our local virtual operator, it uses what is called “domestic roaming”, i.e. constantly switches networks.

With that SIM I had 1% drain every hour (with 100-150 mA), but when I put “ordinary” SIM (from operator with its own network), it started discharge slower, only 0.6% in an hour. And by the way, roaming is still enabled. So now it’s more or less acceptable

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#366

Hello to everyone who has been reporting on this thread, as well as analyzing and speculating for the cause for battery drain issues. It is a good starting point for us as with this information we can possibly narrow down the causes. Or make some smaller improvements to identified areas.

So, we are now following this internally and maybe after 4.6.0 is released we can start looking on this issue more closely.

Thank you all for this discussion here!

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#367

The 10 III has a 4500 mAh battery, so 1% of that capacity is 45 mAh.
150 mA power consumption is 3x higher than that, i.e. around 3% per hour.

#368

Is that supposed to be a bad joke?

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#369

I’m glad that the problem is tackled and sauna brought very good things too like faster gps fix and i have the feeling adding songs to a playlist is also much faster now.

#370

I don’t get it what people think they will achieve by insulting other people whenever possible.

If I were a Sailor at Jolla, this would make me look into every other bug report before looking into this one.

4 Likes
#372

Well, too bad that this is not the developers decision. I bet the developers told the managers quite early that they should focus on eventually getting the basic functionalities out of beta state. My post is addressing the captain, not the crew. This thread is almost two years old by now.

Don’t be shy.

#373

It not me being shy. It’s me trying to not waste my time.

#374

i have an xperia x compact for holidays and i’m still baffled how much more uptime it gets than a 10 ii or 10 iii, i gues with aosp from sony it’s a hit and miss. i started a download of some GBs of size before going to sleep with 23% and in the morning it had about 17%. a 10 ii would have a drained battery by then. also the current of the xperia x compact is 25mA at idle and of the 10ii it is always around 100mA. the xperia x compact is really a nice phone, it even has better battery life with sfos than with android.

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#375

Since the last update it got worse on my XIII. During the night the battery drops from 80% to ~52% in 2G mode. Before I thinl it was about 8-10%.

Anyone else has notice tje same issue?

#376

When it is not used (e.g. at night), the battery capacity consumption is approx. 1%/h.
10III, 4.6.0.13

#377

The same here.
10 III android 13 with old android 11 binaries.
4.6.0.13. With 4G and wi-fi always on, 1%/hr.

#378

Actually, the percentage value isn’t too reliable as it isn’t linear (it tends to decrease at different pace depending on battery charge level). It is much more reliable to check with e.g. Battery Buddy’s log the actual power consumption in mA.

As you can see e.g. in this post, while people get ~ 1% per hour readouts based on the battery level indicator, the actual power consumption they have at that time is on average 100-150 mA, which in case of a 4500 mAh battery is actually 2-3%. To get 1%/h, the average power consumption during that time would need to be 45 mA.

#379

When i install from android to sailfish newly after few android months, let the phone just on the table.
It lasted 3 days. I was shocked because before it was 1 day. Now with 2 emails, weather with event view, 2 Nextcloud, some phone last the same.
No drainage. Echo i haven’t noticed. I’m happy with it.

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