MrZorbatron

Heh, you should see how some folks use their phones. Charge 8 hours overnight, let it drain for 15 minutes while driving in to work. Charge for 8-9 hours while working, let it drain for 15 minutes while driving home. Charge the rest of the time when it's at home, repeat. And for many of them, you can ignore the section about driving, thanks to car chargers. I'm fairly certain that's damaging. Not an expert, just fairly certain.

 

After checking out various battery life apps, my recommendation falls to Wakelock Detector. Set it to advanced mode, and you've got a lot of incredibly useful data. The GS3 in particular can easily suffer from a wakelock involving the Media Scanner Service, which is almost always caused by corrupt media files. Usually, these files come from "FREEEE MP3 DOWNLOADER PARADISE HAPPY" apps, or something similar. Such apps also are known to display ads all over your phone and harvest your personal information, so, you know.

 

Well, shouldn't we be asking for the expertise of a chemical engineer?

I absolutely agree about car chargers with typical use. the problem isn't with car chargers, but with the way people use them.

There are 4 basic behaviors that are injurious to lithium batteries:

• One is never disconnecting in the charger, the endless float. Phones don't usually have the smartest charging circuits. A good charging circuit will go to standby and not engage until the charge level is below 95% or so, even and if disconnected and reconnected will still not begin charging if the battery is over 95%. Remember that it is possible to run the phone off of external power without the charging circuit being connected to the battery.

• The second is repeated shallow charging. This is where somebody runs a battery down by just a few percent, and then charges it by another few percent. This is what happens with car chargers, plug in at 45%, unplug at 49%, plug in at 23%, unplug at 28%, so overall the charger meter doesn't move by more than 5 or 6 percent.

• The third is prolonged and deep discharge. Never store your battery flat dead. Charge it to 40 to 60 percent, and put it away somewhere out of direct sunlight or heat, ideally with temperature that will never get above about 75 degrees fahrenheit.

• The fourth is repeatedly topping it off, which more or less fits into #1. If your battery is not run down by more than 10 percent, say to 85 or 90 percent, don't charge. Thinkpad models, for example, won't engage the charger circuit if the battery charge is above 94 percent, unless the charging behaviors are altered. The computer will run on the adapter, but not connect The charging circuit to the battery.

Another big thing to remember is that your battery may be good for a half life of 500 cycles, which means your capacity falls by half in 500 cycles of charged to dead and back, but if you only half-cycle it, with a maximum charge mobility of 50%, you will get around 1400 half-cycles, so the half life effectively becomes 700 cycles. Remember that the loss of capacity is not an immediate thing that happens once you hit that magical half-life cycle count. Capacity is lost each and every cycle. Once you hit that half way point, now you have another 500 or whatever cycles until your capacity halves again, for 25% of your original design capacity, and so on.  That's why we see laptops with VERY weak batteries that work for ten minutes or something, despite claiming 100% state of charge.

The bottom line is that you should always charge for at least 15%, avoid running below 10% frequently, don't top off for the hell of it, and remember that for every 24 hours your phone is flat dead, your full charge capacity falls by about .8%. Cheap chargers aren't a big deal anymore because the charging circuit on anything with USB is built into the phone, so you don't have to worry there, as long as you are getting a relatively clean 4.8 to 5.2 volt power supply.

Original post was written mostly by Google dictation.  It is now edited to clear up formatting and some remaining word mistakes, for easier reading.

Guys and gals, there's a reason that, even with Sprint's "total equipment protection", batteries are only warrantied for one year. With typical smartphone use of (what I've witnessed) around 1.5 cycles per day, sometimes more, they will degrade quickly - not to mention overcharging through leaving devices plugged in overnight, and then all day at work, and then again...

 

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Another thing is, on Android, check to make sure you're not having some kind of wakelock issue. I have no idea if it's even possible for a wakelock to only occur on LTE, but it seem plausible. Samsung Touchwiz is prone to severe wakelock issues, above and beyond the normal Android problems and Facebook.

The charging circuit in the phone does not allow the battery to be overcharged.  The recommendation to unplug the charger isn't for the phone's sake, but for the use of electricity by the idle charger remaining plugged into the wall.

While it is true that batteries using lithium based chemistries do not like being stored at full charge, this does not mean that float charging them for a few hours will damage them.  If it were days on end that the device remained plugged in, I could see some chemistry related issues decreasing battery life, but not over night.  Incidentally, this phenomenon is related to migration through cell dividers, not  overcharging.  Overcharging of a lithium based battery is bad, very bad, at least damaging the battery instantly, at worst, this damage is catastrophic and possibly pyrotechnic in nature.

As for the wakelock bit, absolutely.  There are great programs out there that will specifically display wakelock activity, GSAM battery monitor is one of them.

And before someone starts arguing by presenting articles written by silly popular tech sites on the internet, let me tell you that those articles aren't written by electrical engineers.  This post was.

I've heard around these forums that LTE will not drain a phone's battery any more than 3g on newer phones.  I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 though and that seems not accurate in my case to the point where I almost dread LTE showing up because I'll be having to go on airplane mode within a couple hours.

 

Even when I go to a place with strong Sprint LTE signal with high data rates (e.g.; 20 mbps), my phone will only last a few hours at most before I am in the yellow.  If I am on 3g though with that kind of signal and general use, I can generally last a day without charging.  

 

Is the Samsung Galaxy S3 just not good at LTE battery life or is LTE simply a battery hog?  I am hoping it is the former since I'm going to be upgrading soon. 

For a SGS3, this is very very bad battery life.  Sounds like you have a background application that uses a lot of data when it sees a fast connection.  I personally notice no difference in life between CDMA only and LTE areas.  I can run the hell out of my S3 and it wouldn't die in less than 5 or 6 hours of continuous screen-on use.

Yeah the 169 thing doesn't apply here.  The LTE sectors aren't sequentially numbered, but I can't find any pattern at all to them.

We have a site nearby that has sectors 465, 20, and 414.  The only thing I know must be maintained is that there cannot be two identically numbered sectors within radio range of each other.

Just a cool candid of my girlfriend, taken last November. Any of you in SE Michigan should seriously check out this place, The Oakland Art Novelty Company.

There is a site with those ugly tube covers near me.  I have no idea what they are thinking with this.  It must make service a much bigger pain.

Yes, the price has dropped from 40k to 5K, which to me signals that its time for commercial communication.

Yeah, I think it's all cyclical though.  I was just looking at specs for a new device that runs 1Gbps over 50 ohm coax, fed by a GigE circuit, to extend the run distance at a lower cost than fiber.  Didn't we just move from coax to twisted pair about 20 years ago...

Or what about how everyone with multiple closely located sites was running 10-40Mbps microwave a big ago and then fiber got cheap enough that they started running their own fiber on leased space on utility poles about 10 years ago.  School districts and municipal services are a great example of this.  Now microwave is getting cheaper again, albeit still ugly if you can't hide the hardware.

I really do think that a lot of this is on about a ten to twenty year cycle, at least on the physical side of things.

But 5th generation back haul is ready.

it has been for years.  Multi-gigabit optical isn't a new technology.  Microwave wise, I can practically run 2 gigabit a few miles (with line of site) for under $10000 with my eyes closed.  That's not a new technology either.  The low price is new, though.

Fine tuning takes weeks, but isn't like a constant effort.  Some of it is automated.  Radio power levels and antenna element angles can be adjusted electronically, without service calls.  Traffic management and allocation of backhaul bandwidth is now dynamic.  This modern network equipment is even aware of its surroundings, allowing automatic mitigation of interference through neighbor-negotiated frequency hopping patterns, power output levels, and antenna angles.

Old news.  It won't work.  In order to fit enough antennas into the device, they had to use too high a frequency to be practical.  Attenuation in building materials and even in foliage would make it useless without line of sight.  It's not "5G", it's just a new transmission method.  Referring to it as 5G was just a way to get people to read the article.  LTE has a LOT of headroom left in it for expansion within the spec (hence its name), so don't expect it to be replaced for many years.

Not quite. That stipulation applies only to the Upper 700 MHz C block licenses, and VZW is the sole license holder in the 50 states. AT&T in Lower 700 MHz spectrum is currently unencumbered by open access requirements. Otherwise, the band 12/17 kerfuffle probably never would have happened.

 

AJ

Interesting. Ok then.

Not likely, that spectrum was too expensive for affordable home use. I would be embarrassed for a client to receive less than 8mbps.

-Will-

The entire point of the 2500/2600 block is that it is easy to use for high capacity fixed broadband services. Mobile use was never part of the equation until Sprint was granted an exception for Xohm WiMAX, although they (and Clearwire) were required to provide fixed services at prices relatively competitive with wired connections. This requirement has not been removed, so I do expect to see an affordable fixed solutions in the near future.

It's like Verizon and AT&T with the open access stipulation on their 700MHz spectrum. Like it or not, they are required to both allow all compatible devices to operate, and to allow data connections on all connected devices to be used in any manner and to access any connectable content or services without carrier interference.

As far as speeds, 5 Mbps is the maximum fixed connection BRS is required to provide as I recall. It is also slow enough to not substantially interfere with higher speed operations, while being fast enough for every day use. Therefore, such a speed cap would be acceptable. I'm not a speed snob like a lot of people are. I understand the difference between usable and not. Frankly, a 2Mbps connection will help you get a job if you are unemployed as well as a 20Mbps or 200Mbps one will. It will also keep you hooked up with your corporate email, letters to grandma, recipes for dinner, travel planning, etc. I am talking about using a connection as an essential tool, not for high quality video and media content here.

Sprint is not a home ISP. If Sprint offers 50Mbps home service via TD-LTE, it will have a lot more takers than WiMax. And it will fill up the airwaves in no time. We all have just been asking for years to have a usable smartphone experience. I'm not willing to give that up for home users.

 

And if they do consider it, you can forget unlimited on it. They will do something like Verizon has done with their home ISP LTE service with data tiers.

 

If I was the head of Sprint I would offer service specifically in rural unserved areas and maybe offer those people unlimited, or very high caps. Or just streaming caps and unlimited browsing.

 

Robert via Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 using Tapatalk

I would like to see a 5 Mbps fixed service on 2.5 only.  I think that is a reasonable basic broadband for home for someone who is not data intensive and doesn't want to deal with wired ISPs.

One company used 15 baud, yes  baud not kilobaud. 4 60 hz power cycles for one measly bit.

Yeah but that's for extreme distances over high tension transmission lines.  It is used to monitor loading and otherwise keep tabs on the health of the system.  Among other things, this allows lines that are near capacity to have some loads decreased and redirected in order to save money.

You guys are confusing powerline networking over the wiring in the home (HomePlug 1.0, HomePlug AV, AV2 and IEEE 1901) and broadband over powerlines (BPL). Those are two completely different efforts. Something tells me automated meter reading is not not done over the powerline. Southern Co employs Itron's Fixed Network to collect data wirelessly.

 

http://www.intelligentutility.com/article/06/04/southern-company-deploys-itrons-fixed-network-and-centron-solid-state-meters-atlanta-georgia

 

BPL is dead in the US because of interference with amateur radio.

In some markets, meter reading is done over the power line, but at very low (kHz) frequencies, and with maximum data rates around 100 kbps.  In other markets, a radio device is used to send the signal to a car that drives by.  Increasingly rarely, a system utilizing a phone line is employed.

BPL is dead yes for this reason.

You know they have the tech to deliver internet via power lines, but the telecom put a hush on it because it's more than what they can do with their copper and cable...or it was, I'm not sure how fast it could get, but it was on up there...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_over_power_lines

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4

Incorrect.  At short/medium distance, they can hit speeds comparable to previous generation cable (DOC 2.x) or previous generation DSL (ADSL2), but ADSL2+ and any flavor of VDSL clobbers it.  Power line broadband also causes horrendous radio interference despite claims by vendors to have minimized it.  At long distance, it works at only a few hundred kilobits per second and is used for monitoring power transmission network health and operational conditions.

This is a different, though semi-related, technology to what is used in household homeplug systems.

No.  Assuming whatever SDR supported the correct frequencies, you would need to still analyze the signal in order to determine what it is.  Maybe you could make a guess by checking out subcarrier spacing, but it wouldn't be exact and it wouldn't determine the carrier (provider).  Far too many opportunities for false positives if you ask me...

To answer part of the OP's question, yes 3G EV-DO (And 2G 1X) speeds should dramatically increase with NV if they were previously below 600kbps. Sprint is connecting faster backhaul to all of the NV equipment.

1xRTT is not 2G, it is a third generation technology.

The ones directly above the network vision antenna are Sprint legacy. Can't ever mistake the old Nortel antennas. 

They look like Sprint and Sprint does use those panels, but they arent.  I will grab a complete picture later.

Uncommon but possible. There is a site in Highland Township, MI (northern Oakland County) that threw me off because it turns out NV was installed on a different rack than legacy.

There are a couple in south Oakland County, IIRC in the Southfield area, that had legacy antenna gear on racks but NV gear directly mounted to the tower itself.  My pictures of one of those sites are in the "How to spot" thread for Samsung IBEZ hardware.

And no, the panels directly above the NV hardware are not Sprint.  Sprint has 6 coaxial cables running from their boxes up the tower and there was a rack above with the same pair of narrow rectangular antenna panels that Sprint uses almost everywhere around me.

I am hoping it is just my EVOLTE being really really bad, but I lose the LTE when I get just about 2 miles from the live site in Myrtle Beach... I was able to map a solid 2 mile circle around it -- then nothing (it drops off around -125).  So basically with this EVO I will have little two mile radius islands of LTE when the light up more towers (I am going to eventually get my wife's GS4 out there and play with it to see how far I can make it away from the tower)...

The EVO LTE has been noted many times and in many places for poor LTE reception and in fact relatively poor RF performance in general, especially for a high end device.

LTE reaches further than EvDo but LTE is more fragile.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4

No and yes.  Both signals travel an infinite distance from their sources, decreasing in strength all the way, until they eventually become too weak to be demodulated by a receiver.  LTE signals will have exactly the same strength as CDMA signals sent from the same location on the same frequency with the same radio output power.

LTE does have a substantially more fragile structure, both due to the complexity of the modulation and the fact that LTE (as with GSM) cannot function correctly with a negative signal to noise ratio, while CDMA can.  This has always been one of the biggest advantages CDMA had for coverage in RF-difficult areas.

Sounds like a lot of cheap real estate to me.  In the days before elevators, the higher the floor, the less desirable the office/living space.  The top floor office was literally the cheapest spot you could get.  When elevators came along, that was precisely reversed.

Thanks for that info..  I wondered and was close enough to read several things and still wasn't getting a clue. Seems like quite the extensive system just thrown on a trailer like that.  I sort of assumed it was AT&T just because of the whole "big 3" thing and would have expected them to put something at the Fair.  T-Mobile does have pretty decent speeds around the Dsm area providing you get their signal ok. Friend of mine has their prepay and it does well most of the time.

T-Mobile uses the same cabinets in most markets as the old Sprint Ericsson cabinets, plus the fact that their radio units are very distinct looking.

Bottom truck is tmobile.