Hello, We just established service in the central FL area [sid: 42] and seem to be experiencing extreme battery drain on one of the phones. We returned a samsung u520 thinking it was the phone or battery, but the new phone (LG AX275) also seems to be draining rather quickly. Only a few calls of limited time are made and it dies after about a day or two. (we are roaming at home but not at work) The user of the other phone mentioned that she thought she noticed something about analog so I'm wondering if we're experiencing a tower flop situation like in the below url. http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/alltel-users/56933-battery-drain-problem.html I really don't want to cancel the service, but this is becoming very frustrating. My phone [treo 700p] "seems" to be lasting longer, although I believe it has a much larger battery. I'm also doing many things on the palm side of it with 3rd party programs and heavily utilizing the data services so I would expect my battery to drain more. Any advice? Thank You,
Well the 275 doesn't have analog, so that rules out that. A phone is supposed to be charged every night so a day or two isn't that bad, but if you are hardly using it it could be a problem. The phone's "technical" specs say it can go for 180 minutes of calls or 400 hours of standby. If you are on an NID border or something it could be worse, but I doubt that. However it could be just battery conditioning. Some new batteries have to "get in a groove" so to speak. After about 3-4 charges it should start running more efficient. You could try setting the phone to home only in the network settings and that will keep it from scanning for roaming partners. But you have to remember to set it back to standard scan/automatic when you travel outside your home area.... You could set your phones SID to the network you are roaming on at home. While your phone is at home it is constantly looking for an alltel system, cycling through it's PRL. So that could be a key part of it. This...and the new battery issue could be the combined source of your battery trouble.
Not sure on the analog deal. The icon glossary lists the green "A" as analog mode which it was switching from D to A at home. This link also mentions analog. At any rate it was also interesting that we were roaming 100% of the time from FL to Mobile, AL yesterday although we did not see the same kind of battery drain and only made a few calls.. (during the high-drain times the phone was also off for 8-9 hours during the workday) Also, is it normal for the phone to always roam if you're outside your "home" sid? Looks like we're on sid 120 right now and other alltel customers in this area aren't roaming. The mobile customers also said they initially had problems with always roaming and finally got it fixed with CS. ? I wouldn't mind giving the phone more time to burn in the battery, but if this just isn't going to work then I don't want to extend past my 15 or however many days before we can return them.
Wirelessly posted (MOT-24.0_/00.62 UP.Browser/6.2.3.4.c.1.123 (GUI) MMP/2.0) Yes it is normal for the phone to show roam when outside your home sid. It is free though. I will post later from an actual computer (on my krzr right now).
Just to elaborate and hopefully save you a little typing later on, Alltel does a flashing triangle for free roam on their National Freedom. The only problem is that they only designate your local SID (System ID number) as "home" on the phone. So in your home area, the triangle (or R) doesn't blink. But in some cases, if you go to the next county over which sometimes has a different SID, the triangle will blink, even if you're still on Alltel. Some people, understandably, just don't get the concept of the roaming indicator blinking and still being on alltel, usually because this isn't explained when most people sign up for service, even though 'Roaming' is usually considered a big deal. Also, with the Treo 700, it doesn't have a blinking roaming indicator, so it immediately just starts showing roaming on any other SID. I've read that Alltel will be dropping the flashing roam indicator in the near future and display roaming only when you are actually roaming. Hopefully it will be very soon as it will clear up a lot of confusion for many subscribers. But SID 120 is Alltel for Mobile, AL, Pensacola, FL, and surrounding areas. But if the battery didn't drain as bad as it normally does on your trip, then I would also say that it's very possible your battery needs to go through a couple charge cycles. If you get back home and the battery starts draining quick though, than it would sound like a case of you normally being between towers or SIDs and your phone continually switching back and forth. If it's just bouncing between towers, there's often not much that can be done, but if it's a case of SID switching, as Strunke mentioned, maybe setting your phone to home only, or on an LG, you can also program it to lock out certain SIDs. The key is knowing which SID you should be on and which you don't want but that shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
Just signed up to add info on this problem, I spent August 30th-31st in a hotel on International Dr in Orlando, with my AX8600. I was roaming and not aware of the actual SID number. My AX8600 battery life was greatly reduced overnight, from full charge to half in 8 hours, with almost no calls placed or received during that period. I noticed that I did have periods of an intermittent EVDO indicator, and had problems placing calls. When I used the service menu to block PCS and use CELL only, the calls went through. My phone has the V06 upgrade. I do not expect to see the EVDO indicator outside my home SID, I do not have any custom PRL installed only the usual "30008". I roam all over the US with this phone, and this is the worst area I have experienced. This is probably some problem with that area, and not an indication of phone problems. I left on the 31st and won't be back in that area anytime soon to do anymore experimenting. Maybe there are options on the AX275 that will allow locking to CELL only? Maybe that would help till the system gets fixed.
Doesn't sound too promising, but I'll give CS a call later and see what happens. The roaming thing doesn't bother me, although it certainly wouldn't hurt alltel to explain this a bit more with either a pamphlet or in their online help. (I still don't think my GF buys the whole roaming deal.) I've tried the home-only setting, but since we're roaming at home (vs work) we get no service. I'm hoping we could find a CS rep that could do some actual analysis of what towers we're using/etc.. @mrrphone: That's very interesting and sounds like exactly what was happening minus the evdo. (not applicable on her ax275 - which is turning out to be a pretty shoddy phone.) We weren't very happy with sprint over the last few years although this switch isn't working too well either.. hmm -r
Ended up speaking with several people today and at least confirmed that I was on the correct home SID and that there was good digital coverage at my address. He also opened a ticket for them to look at the analog flopping deal as that phone should have stayed on dig. Also had them ship a razr to swap out for the AX275. Probably should have just went with that in the first place. So far the battery life has been fine up here in Mobile so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the razr.
All seems well now that we got a razr. No tower flopping and it's still at full battery since wednesday evening. It is interesting now that we came back from Mobile we're always on SID 5116 at home instead of 42. I asked if we should switch our home sid to 5116, but apparently that's not the solution since our home market and phone number is in lakeland. Also got a half-assed call back from the network/tech group to merely state that they couldn't do any troubleshooting on the towers since they didn't own them.. Well, hell I could have guessed that, but it took them 6 days to confirm? Their big suggestion was to go swap the phone.. Now if only I could find a good BT headset that worked well with my phone -and- doesn't tear up my ear after 10 minutes of use.
