UK sim card is killing my battery

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turb

788 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 205960 4-Dec-2016 20:28

I'm visiting the uk at the moment, so I purchased a 3mobile sim card to use for the month I'm here.

I'm finding that my battery is discharging about twice as fast as normal. If it's been on charge overnight it's down to 15% by about 4 pm just on standby.

Phone is a Samsung S5 mini SM-G800Y running 5.1.1. Sim is a £20 prepay.

I've tried rebooting, battery pull etc. Power saving mode helps a little, but why should I have to?

3mobile seems to have pretty rubbish coverage - ok in London, but only two bars in a large town, nothing in a semi-rural area. Does the phone have to work harder when the signal is poor?

Are there any settings I can tweak?

When I inserted the sim, the phone downloaded a couple of configuration files off the network which I accepted. Did these somehow poison the phone? Can I delete them?

My wife's iPhone 7 has the same sim. Her phone shows the same poor coverage but isn't affected by the battery issue.

I have downloaded a couple of apps but the battery issue started before that.

Interests: HTPC, Web App authoring.

jonherries

1086 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

# 1682134 4-Dec-2016 20:41

I would have thought Threes coverage is worse, especially in the country, Vodafone and EE probably offer better coverage. Wondering if it is 4G related? Lots of 2.5Gsites were replaced with 4G and the 3Gs were left as is, for later replacement, so might be that?

Jon

ubergeeknz

3344 posts

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Vocus

# 1682137 4-Dec-2016 20:52

One person supports this post

Just a guess, but perhaps your handset doesn't support all the frequencies in use by your chosen carrier (hence the bad coverage).

And yes, if coverage is weak, your phone has to crank up the transmit power, hence it will burn through battery faster. Aside from screen this is the biggest user of battery. Battery saver isn't a bad idea if this is to be a temporary situation.

Stu

Hammered
5290 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

# 1682192 4-Dec-2016 22:42

I think I know where your charge is going. It's being transferred to another device! See story here.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

Batman

Mad Scientist
21070 posts

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# 1682203 4-Dec-2016 23:31

moral of the story: use iphone 7?

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

Linuxluver

5491 posts

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# 1682274 5-Dec-2016 09:47

I had a 3 SIM in the UK last year for a month. Unlimited data for £10.....woohoo! (Then).

But as you say, the coverage was pretty hohum....and the phone trying to talk to distant cellular sites really does eat the battery. This isn't unusual. If you want to see the same thing in Auckland, just go to the wharf end of Beach Haven Road for the day. You're down almost out of sight of the three (VF, Spark & 2D) cell towers at the bottom of Birkdale road and your battery will be dead in 4-5 hours. I was renovating a house there a couple of years ago and if my phone wasn't dead just after lunch it was a miracle.

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