Why Does My Phone Battery Drain Faster At Certain Locations?

[Peepnbrick]

A while ago when I went to a skiing on the Canadian border, I noticed that while I was out skiing all day, my phone battery life was amazing. I didn't have to charge it for days.

 

Then when I got back to my regular schedule, I noticed my phone battery drained way faster than it did on the mountain. Like, I would go to school with 90%, then get home around 7 hours later with 20% having not used my phone at all during the day in an effort to save battery. This was despite the fact that I did my best to close all background applications, turned off WiFi, Bluetooth, and many push notifications, and upgraded to Android M with Doze on my G4. I also tried Battery Doctor, but that didn't help very much.

 

I was recently sick, and stayed in my house for about 4 days. While I was there, my phone battery life was also very good - I could go a couple of days without charging it despite leaving WiFi on and occasionally using it. My house is in a pretty private area - my phone can't even detect any of my neighbors' wifi networks.

 

TL;DR - my phone battery life is worse when I'm in a densely populated area. Why would it do this? Would it be related to noise on the network from all of the surrounding phones?

[dejanmarolt]

My guess would be on bad signal or phone constantly changing between multiple antennas. 

[Murasaki]

1 minute ago, dejanmarolt said:

My guess would be on bad signal or phone constantly changing between multiple antennas. 

I'm certain it is this aswell.

 

Have you even checked the battery usage in settings?

[Peepnbrick]

1 minute ago, ModuleLFS said:

I'm certain it is this aswell.

 

Have you even checked the battery usage in settings?

Yeah. The usual battery draining suspects are cell standby, screen, android OS, and phone Idle. Then some other apps that autostart.

[Cyrus Howbrook]

This may be because of many things, there may not of been a good cellar connection near the mountains, this may have caused your phone to loose connections to the antennas. There probably wont be anything wrong with your phone battery, but have you tried turning your location off and your wifi when you are not using it?  Have you also been using your phone less?

 

 

QUOTE MEH

[Peepnbrick]

6 minutes ago, Cyrus Howbrook said:

This may be because of many things, there may not of been a good cellar connection near the mountains, this may have caused your phone to loose connections to the antennas. There probably wont be anything wrong with your phone battery, but have you tried turning your location off and your wifi when you are not using it?  Have you also been using your phone less?

 

 

QUOTE MEH

While this is a logical explanation, it doesn't explain why my battery life was so good when I was sick at my house for a couple of days where I usually have a 4g connection, which sometimes dips down into 3g. And yes, I religiously turn of my wifi and location, and barely use my phone during the day.

[Peepnbrick]

23 minutes ago, ModuleLFS said:

I'm certain it is this aswell.

 

Have you even checked the battery usage in settings?

The coverage in my school is pretty spotty -  I can't even get a signal in some rooms. @dejanmarolt mentioned that weak signal strength could also have something to do with it? If it's either of these things that have been mentioned, I suppose the only solution is to send Verizon a check to cover the construction of a new cell tower, or turn on airplane mode?

[Murasaki]

1 minute ago, Peepnbrick said:

The coverage in my school is pretty spotty -  I can't even get a signal in some rooms. @dejanmarolt mentioned that weak signal strength could also have something to do with it? If it's either of these things that have been mentioned, I suppose the only solution is to send Verizon a check to cover the construction of a new cell tower, or turn on airplane mode?

Airplane mode is a solution, yes. That turns off cell completely since when there is no signal, the phone just constantly searches for network which can drain some power.

[SImoHayha]

7 minutes ago, Peepnbrick said:

While this is a logical explanation, it doesn't explain why my battery life was so good when I was sick at my house for a couple of days where I usually have a 4g connection, which sometimes dips down into 3g. And yes, I religiously turn of my wifi and location, and barely use my phone during the day.

Because when a phone loses communication with a radio antenna. The phone will try to communicate with any other towers which uses power. 

[Peepnbrick]

1 minute ago, Ramamataz said:

Because when a phone loses communication with a radio antenna. The phone will try to communicate with any other towers which uses power. 

So it uses more power to search for these other towers rather than maintain communication with the one that it was previously on?

[SImoHayha]

13 minutes ago, Peepnbrick said:

So it uses more power to search for these other towers rather than maintain communication with the one that it was previously on?

Basically yes. When your at home there is always a nearby tower. However in the mountains radio signals get a little wonky because of how mountains are shaped and other things like snow and minerals in the mountains.

 

So to sum it up. AT home there is always a nearby towers am assuming you live near a city or in a city. However at a location such as a school sometimes they have phone signal jammers or materials that prevent signals from bouncing in the the buildings which causes the phone to try and communicate with more towers in an attempt to establish a connection, which uses more battery life.

[Peepnbrick]

8 minutes ago, Ramamataz said:

Basically yes. When your at home there is always a nearby tower. However in the mountains radio signals get a little wonky because of how mountains are shaped and other things like snow and minerals in the mountains.

 

So to sum it up. AT home there is always a nearby towers am assuming you live near a city or in a city. However at a location such as a school sometimes they have phone signal jammers or materials that prevent signals from bouncing in the the buildings which causes the phone to try and communicate with more towers in an attempt to establish a connection, which uses more battery life.

Oh I see. That makes sense. I'll have to look into if they have signal jammers  and maybe use some political influence to get them turned off. But I doubt that's the case - it's probably just the thick concrete walls. Thanks for the input!