LTE battery life ??

[bmattox79]

I know while I'm in an no LTE coverage area if I have LTE enabled it smokes my battery life cause its constantly searching for it. Does it get better on battery when u have a steady LTE signal and isn't searching anymore?

[aerxx]

It is funny you bring this up, because I was just thinking about this the other day. My phone gets amazing battery life when its connected to an LTE signal.

[WiWavelength]

Nope. That is either unrelated to LTE or an iPhone issue. The last few generations of Android devices have not experienced any significant battery drain due to LTE.

 

AJ

[nobius]

On iOS 6, If you go into Settings | General | Usage, it will show you the times since last full charge for Usage and Standby.  You could use this to compare and know for sure.

 

I'm very happy with my iPhone's battery life on LTE.  But I'm in Houston so the coverage is pretty good here.

 

If you are not in an LTE area, go to Settings | General | Cellular to turn off LTE.  I usually turn off LTE when going to the family farm to keep my iPhone 5 from searching for it in order to get better battery life.  

[Mondays In Flames]

It is funny you bring this up, because I was just thinking about this the other day. My phone gets amazing battery life when its connected to an LTE signal.

Same here, when connected to LTE, my battery last longer than 3G. I think it probably has to do with the difference in speed, especially when all my accounts are syncing, it syncs faster over LTE, rather then just hang there trying to download slowly over 3G.

 

 

-Luis

[koiulpoi]

It might affect your battery life at first. The weaker the signal you are connected to, the more power your phone uses (and thus, the faster the battery drains). If you're constantly connected to extremely weak and distant LTE sites, it might cause extra battery drain. However, that's going to be rare, and there are so many other things that could affect your battery life that I doubt you could pair it down. I say leave it on.

[kory108]

Turning off LTE when you do not have any LTE service in your area will not help your battery life at all. The LTE and 3G radios use the same chip, so there is no power savings by disabling LTE on the iPhone. Like WiWavelength stated this did not used to be the case with older Android phones, but now all recent phones use one chip for 3G and LTE.

 

That being said, if you do have LTE but very poor service turning off LTE can help boost battery life as your phone is not trying to connect to the poor LTE signal but instead a closer 3G signal.

 

Anandtech did a battery life test of the iPhone on LTE and 3G and found the iPhone battery life just about doubles when LTE service is available in the area: 

 

[Rukin1]

with little use, i in home with shit coverage and LTE enabled for 2 days... On my gs3

[Dkoellerwx]

I know while I'm in an no LTE coverage area if I have LTE enabled it smokes my battery life cause its constantly searching for it. Does it get better on battery when u have a steady LTE signal and isn't searching anymore?

 

In addition to what others have said, just because LTE is enabled doesn't mean your phone is constantly searching for it. It only runs occasional scans, with minimal impact on battery life. You either have a weak signal, or something else is wrong. 

[supersanborn]

I can definitely say that what has a much bigger impact on my battery life is the speed and signal strength of my data connection. When I'm in ATL (where there is generally very plentiful LTE), I tend to get great battery life that easily smokes my 3G battery life. My GS3 doesn't really seem to lose anything from being left in CDMA/LTE mode and definitely isn't scanning that often to begin with.

[AJC1973]

yea well my thunderbolt lte gets crappy battery life when on lte... /sarcasm

 

which is where this claim that lte gives and batteries dont mix well came from... once upon a time that was the case but not so much now like AJ said  

[WiWavelength]

yea well my thunderbolt lte gets crappy battery life when on lte... /sarcasm

 

which is where this claim that lte gives and batteries dont mix well came from... once upon a time that was the case but not so much now like AJ said  

 

The real issue was that a hodgepodge of 65 nm process chipsets, battery, and big screen did not mix well.  As airlinks, WiMAX and LTE had relatively little to do with the issue.  Thankfully, with chipset consolidation and 28 nm process, the problem has been largely solved.

 

AJ

[MacinJosh]

Historically, my phone has done better for battery life in an LTE area than an EVDO area. But my phone doesn't constantly scan for LTE and kill my battery life, my phone scans for a better EVDO signal to attach to, but never finds it when needed because there is too much to interfere in between me and the local Sprint site to get a better signal.