When will you acknowledge / fix battery drain issue?

With all due respect Otto, I don't get your purpose of posting that you are not having an issue.  That's great for you.  But it's not the purpose of the thread in my opinion.  The purpose of the thread is for people to express an issue that they are having and hopefully AT&T is able to resolve their issue.  

Your posts almost come across as saying that either: a)people are lying or b)that people are stupid.  Neither option is very flattering. 

I'm sorry you mis-interpret my postings. I've seen way too many MicroCell/AT&T bashings because folks don't understand how to setup their MicroCells, their phones don't play nice with the MicroCell or a myriad of other issues that are not AT&T/MicroCell problems to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an AT&T fan boy by any means, and my original postings are very similar to the "bashings", but once my issues were fixed I thought I'd give back because a lot of issues were the same as mine. The more I learned, the more I realized that common symptoms can have multiple causes. The reason I post my "non-issues" is to show that the MicroCell does work as designed for various setups, ISPs, phones, etc. I try my best to help people but some of the postings do not have enough information to see exactly what the problem may be, albeit AT&Ts or the OPs.

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@Otto Pylot wrote:

The reason I post my "non-issues" is to show that the MicroCell does work as designed for various setups, ISPs, phones, etc. 

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I guess that's my point.  The purpose of the thread isn't too show that the MicroCell does work for some users.

In it's basic concept, users are saying that with all things being equal, they experience siginificant battery drain issues while on the microcell than they do while not on it.  

Also, your suggestions do not seem to be fixes.  Suggesting to turn off wifi, stopping notifications, putting phone into sleep mode and closing unused apps increases a phones battery life in general, whether you're on the microcell or not.    

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@NormChar wrote:

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@Otto Pylot wrote:

The reason I post my "non-issues" is to show that the MicroCell does work as designed for various setups, ISPs, phones, etc. 

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I guess that's my point.  The purpose of the thread isn't too show that the MicroCell does work for some users.

 

In it's basic concept, users are saying that with all things being equal, they experience siginificant battery drain issues while on the microcell than they do while not on it.  

 

Also, your suggestions do not seem to be fixes.  Suggesting to turn off wifi, stopping notifications, putting phone into sleep mode and closing unused apps increases a phones battery life in general, whether you're on the microcell or not.    

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Well Norm, then I guess we agree to disagree. The suggestions I make have made a difference in some cases, but admittedly not all. But you never know with the MicroCell, so it's worth a try. If you have any solid fixes for problems posted here, then please post them. I can put them in my database of possible fixes, from the user end, and we can take it from there. But arguing about what works and doesn't work is counter-productive so we should just leave it at that.

We've had problems with the microcell for quite some time. Every one or two days our phones would lose the microcell connection and we would need to reboot the microcell to get service. Problems of this type have been documented in other threads here. I've tried just about all the troubleshooting steps and configurations with no change. That is until a few days ago.

As of a few days ago we're staying connected to the microcell, with no changes on our end (was a firmware update pushed out? tower configuration changed?), but now our phones' batteries are draining at a very high rate. We can barely make it through half a day before the batteries are ready to die.

The connection problem (which seems to be resolved) and the battery drain are not specific to a particular brand/model of phone. We've seen the issues with a mix of the following phones: Samsung Focus, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4s, HTC WP 8X, and Nokia Lumia 920.

I sort of answered you in the other thread but the bottom line is I don't know. I leave my iPhone 5 on all of the time (as well as WiFi) and find that I need to charge my phone about every 2 days whereas our old Samsung 3G only will last at least a week or so (and it's on all of the time and doesn't use WiFi, no data plan).

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@Otto Pylot wrote:

I sort of answered you in the other thread but the bottom line is I don't know. I leave my iPhone 5 on all of the time (as well as WiFi) and find that I need to charge my phone about every 2 days whereas our old Samsung 3G only will last at least a week or so (and it's on all of the time and doesn't use WiFi, no data plan).

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I saw the reply -- thanks.

I replied there, too. We're back to the microcell dropping connection again, so right now there's no opportunity to try and troubleshoot the battery drain. After many months of it dropping and trying the troubleshooting steps and various configurations it's probably time to contact customer care.

FYI, I recently switched from the Moto Razr i to an unlocked HTC One with the same number and the battery drain issue appears to have gone away.  Looks like it is phone specific as I haven't changed anything else.  Only thing I had to do was re-boot the Microcell for the HTC to register on the uCell properly.  Both phones are running Jellybean so could be a phone firmware or hardware issue causing the problem.  

The battery drain issue is briefly touched upon in my MicroCell Technical, Operational, and Troubleshooting Guide just posted. All cell phones will adjust their transmission strength in realtionship to the MicroCell. Some are just more efficient than others which could account for the battery life variability between phones. Leaving WiFi on, turning off apps that don't need to be on all of time, etc can also help battery life.