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Verizon iPhone Battery Sucks - Recently Moved & Keeps Seaching for Signal (3G-Edge)

HappyDude20

HappyDude20

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
3,688
1,479
Los Angeles, Ca
I've recently moved into the dorms here at UCLA and all of a sudden my iPhone 4's battery life utterly sucks.

When I was living back at home my iPhone, at the end of a long day would be at like 40-ish%. Now, I'm lucky if my iPhone is still on by the end of a short day.

There are other dorm and roommates here w/ iPhones on AT&T and they seem to have better reception all around. My iPhone here keeps switching from 3G to that little circle signifying the internet is dead slow. Obviously its the iPhone looking back and forth for a reliable signal, though it seems I need a solution for living these next 9 months at the UCLA dorms.

Any advice is appreciated.
 
If you call them and tell them you get no signal where you are Verizon will send out a technician to check your area. If he verifies that you have **** signal then they will let you out of your contract without an etf (at least they did for me)...
 
HappyDude20 said:
I've recently moved into the dorms here at UCLA and all of a sudden my iPhone 4's battery life utterly sucks.

When I was living back at home my iPhone, at the end of a long day would be at like 40-ish%. Now, I'm lucky if my iPhone is still on by the end of a short day.

There are other dorm and roommates here w/ iPhones on AT&T and they seem to have better reception all around. My iPhone here keeps switching from 3G to that little circle signifying the internet is dead slow. Obviously its the iPhone looking back and forth for a reliable signal, though it seems I need a solution for living these next 9 months at the UCLA dorms.

Any advice is appreciated.
Click to expand...


You could force the phone to only use 3G however that does require SSHing into your device.
 
Well, the battery issues are from your phone trying to pick up signal. The only way you can get that fixed is by ditching VZ Or buying one of those network improver things (which I bet is probably not allowed on campus).

Btw, Verizon doesn't have "edge". Its either 3G or 1X RTT (circle thing).
On AT&T, it's Edge, 3G and GPRS (circle thing)
 
wordoflife said:
Well, the battery issues are from your phone trying to pick up signal. The only way you can get that fixed is by ditching VZ Or buying one of those network improver things (which I bet is probably not allowed on campus).

Btw, Verizon doesn't have "edge". Its either 3G or 1X RTT (circle thing).
On AT&T, it's Edge, 3G and GPRS (circle thing)
Click to expand...

I agree.
And the same will happen to any phone on any provider if it keeps searching and dropping signal back and forth.
See if Verizon will provide you with a femtocell device so at least when you're at your dorm you wont have that problem any more.
http://support.vzw.com/information/network_extender.html
 
appleguy123 said:
Do you think that the college would allow that?
Click to expand...

I dont see why not.
Its just a device that uses his broadband internet to acess voice and data services on his VZ phone when he is within wifi range of that device. Only his phone and phones that he registers on that device can use that particular femtocell. Its not like a verizon tower for everyone to use.
But wouldnt hurt to ask to make sure they're ok with it.
 
Applejuiced said:
I dont see why not.
Its just a device that uses his broadband internet to acess voice and data services on his VZ phone when he is within wifi range of that device. Only his phone and phones that he registers on that device can use that particular femtocell. Its not like a verizon tower for everyone to use.
But wouldnt hurt to ask to make sure they're ok with it.
Click to expand...

I think you mean the school's broadband internet, thus the problem.
 
appleguy123 said:
I think you mean the school's broadband internet, thus the problem.
Click to expand...

Not sure how it works. Do some dorms use a single school wifi network or some you get your own internet service provider if you want?
But if its the schools internet I can see where they would not allow and block services like that along with many other ports, websites and stuff like torrents etc..
 
UCLA has it's own massive campus wide WiFi network. The problem here is that every time you turn on any device (MacBook Pro, iPad or iPhone) you must re-connect to the WiFi network manually. Meaning I need to input my UCLA login and password every time I log in somewhere new.

I other words, when I'm in my dorm my iOS devices are connected to the UCLA network...however if I hang out in a friend's dorm room a few doors down, most likely i'll be prompted to reconnect to the UCLA network seeing as it's in a different part of the campus.......even if I'm only 20 feet away from my original dorm setting. Same goes for wanting to connect via UCLA's WiFi if I'm in the middle of campus, at the gym or in a new classroom.

My friend has the iPhone 4 on AT&T and we've been comparing our battery lives to the T within the past few days. Considering we've been setting our location services off and notifications off, he still ends up with better battery life (even though he uses his phone more than I did any particular day)..
 
Applejuiced said:
Not sure how it works. Do some dorms use a single school wifi network or some you get your own internet service provider if you want?
But if its the schools internet I can see where they would not allow and block services like that along with many other ports, websites and stuff like torrents etc..
Click to expand...

It would be the schools internet. When I was in the dorms we had Ethernet jacks in our rooms and we were not allowed to use our own wifi routers or any of your own routers and if they caught you they killed your port. Part of the problem was the routers trying to be the DHCP host. Running an open wifi was also a quick way to loss your internet.

For the Femtecell they might also block the required ports for it. They are really stick on that stuff and they are very worried about pirating as well.

HappyDude20 said:
UCLA has it's own massive campus wide WiFi network. The problem here is that every time you turn on any device (MacBook Pro, iPad or iPhone) you must re-connect to the WiFi network manually. Meaning I need to input my UCLA login and password every time I log in somewhere new.

I other words, when I'm in my dorm my iOS devices are connected to the UCLA network...however if I hang out in a friend's dorm room a few doors down, most likely i'll be prompted to reconnect to the UCLA network seeing as it's in a different part of the campus.......even if I'm only 20 feet away from my original dorm setting. Same goes for wanting to connect via UCLA's WiFi if I'm in the middle of campus, at the gym or in a new classroom.

My friend has the iPhone 4 on AT&T and we've been comparing our battery lives to the T within the past few days. Considering we've been setting our location services off and notifications off, he still ends up with better battery life (even though he uses his phone more than I did any particular day)..
Click to expand...


Are you sure your settings are correct. I know log in are pretty common at schools and at multiple ones I have been at along with family members it all messing with the settings on our phones, computers and from that we only need to log in one and it is good anywhere on campus no matter what the router.

Sounds like Verizon signal in were you are kind of sucks. Hell it could be as simple as your location on campus. At TTU there were spots were Sprint would not work and AT&T would. Walk across the building to the other side and it was the other way around. Heck there were several spots on campus were calls would drop and we could dodge those spots by walking simple 5' to the right and we could pin it down to the exact line on where it would happen. Mind you it was building blocking and knowing where the towers were.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

appleguy123 said:
macingman said:
Wouldn't there be campus wifi you can connect to or am I wrong?
Click to expand...

Looking for texts and phone calls use the cell network. Wifi won't help that.
Click to expand...

My point is of you are connected to wifi the phone wouldn't constantly be needing to search for edge/3G.
 
macingman said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)



My point is of you are connected to wifi the phone wouldn't constantly be needing to search for edge/3G.
Click to expand...

Yes it will be looking for Edge/3G, because it needs that signal to receive texts or calls, which don't run off WiFi.
 
Tom8 said:
Yes it will be looking for Edge/3G, because it needs that signal to receive texts or calls, which don't run off WiFi.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. If you used wifi for data, and turned off 3G data, the reception may work better. The CDMA iPhone, like most CDMA devices, uses 1X for all voice and SMS. If the 1X signal is good and the EVDO signal sucks (they are often different, which is why many Verizon devices had two sets of signal bars), turning off 3G could help.

I had the same problem at my house when I had Sprint. Their EVDO signal was non-existent, but the 1X signal was just fine. As a result, my battery would never last more than about 6 hours with any smartphone if I was at home the entire time. Once I got a smartphone with wifi, the problem was solved.
 
AnthroMatt said:
Not necessarily. If you used wifi for data, and turned off 3G data, the reception may work better. The CDMA iPhone, like most CDMA devices, uses 1X for all voice and SMS. If the 1X signal is good and the EVDO signal sucks (they are often different, which is why many Verizon devices had two sets of signal bars), turning off 3G could help.

I had the same problem at my house when I had Sprint. Their EVDO signal was non-existent, but the 1X signal was just fine. As a result, my battery would never last more than about 6 hours with any smartphone if I was at home the entire time. Once I got a smartphone with wifi, the problem was solved.
Click to expand...

I don't believe you can turn of 3G
 
macingman said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)



My point is of you are connected to wifi the phone wouldn't constantly be needing to search for edge/3G.
Click to expand...
The phone has to maintain a constant connection to a cell tower in order to look for texts or calls. The is independent of the wifi connection used for Apps and browsing.

----------
wordoflife said:
I don't believe you can turn of 3G
Click to expand...

You can. Unless Verizon is different.
3g-iphone-network-settings.jpg
 
appleguy123 said:
The phone has to maintain a constant connection to a cell tower in order to look for texts or calls. The is independent of the wifi connection used for Apps and browsing.

----------



You can. Unless Verizon is different. Image
Click to expand...

Verizon is different. You cannot turn off 3G on Verizon.
 
appleguy123 said:
The phone has to maintain a constant connection to a cell tower in order to look for texts or calls. The is independent of the wifi connection used for Apps and browsing.

----------



You can. Unless Verizon is different. Image
Click to expand...

Verizon is different.

3G on AT&T is a different signal type.
Way to compare it to 3G on Verizon is think about Edge vs GPRS. Edge is just a faster GPRS. Verizon 3G is just a faster version of there 2G signal.
 
On Verizon, under Network settings turn off cellular data, 3G Indicator goes off immediately.
 
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