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My main concern with these higher frequency connections is that they require a lot more power to run. So we can’t have phones that will last weeks without charg

My main concern with these higher frequency connections is that they require a lot more power to run. So we can’t have phones that will last weeks without charging.

loloquwowndueo 3y ago
Turn off cellular and wifi on your phone. I bet it won’t last more than a few days anyway. I don’t think radio power consumption is the barrier keeping us from weeks-long battery life.
- Izkata 3y ago
  I actually did this with my old Android phone earlier this summer after getting my new one. Under normal use I had to charge it every day, with Airplane Mode on (and, granted, not using it) the battery lasted like 3 or 4 weeks.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    > and, granted, not using it Well sure, then it's like a tablet in standby, which similarly can last a month or so. But it's not going to last more than a day or two if you've got the screen on, playing games, watching movies, using apps offline.
- timschmidt 3y ago
  Installing a version of Android without Google Play Services running constantly in the background effectively doubles handset battery life in my experience. Disabling radios can do that again if the device is rarely used.
  - gst 3y ago
    Slightly offtopic but related: One of my mobile providers supports configuring public (non firewalled) IP addresses for mobile devices and when choosing that option my phone battery drains very significantly faster than otherwise. I suspect it's because all the random packets that arrive every second or so on the public interface (when NAT and firewall are disabled) either cause the radio to use a lot more battery or prevent the CPU from going into sleep mode (or both of that).
    - lxgr 3y ago
      I've been wondering about that! A long time ago, I had a phone plan like that as well (in fact, a public IPv4 was the only option), and I was wondering if random port scanning would eventually use up all of my data allowance. Turns out stateful firewalls aren't just a security factor on mobile internet connections.
      - korhojoa 3y ago
        I've luckily mostly been on unlimited data plans, so I don't know about it using up your data, but I guess it would? Your device is sending and receiving data. I don't think there's a distinction for externally made connections, otherwise vpn tunnels would have been really popular. I did have an experience with my phone being suddenly used by random internet users. I had ampache running on my n900 (maemo/debian-based) and somebody found it on the internet and started streaming my music. :D I had a higher-than-normal amount of battery usage for a few days so I decided to see what's using it and discovered that my music was being played and downloaded.
    - foobarian 3y ago
      That reminds me of when I had a computer with spinning rust hard drives on my desk in grad school. At some point I was trying to focus but there was a periodic, roughly once a second hard drive noise that was driving me nuts. Went through the usual suspects at the time like the background locatedb updater, and eventually ended up finding that some bot was trying to ssh login once per second going down a list of passwords, and the errors were being logged to disk. Need I mention the computer had a public IP address?
  - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
    So you go from 1 to 4 days. Still not “weeks” :)
lxgr 3y ago
> My main concern with these higher frequency connections is that they require a lot more power to run. That's generally not true. What does require more power is a higher data rate (which is often available only on higher frequency bands, due to there being more bandwidth), but there shouldn't be any meaningful difference for a constant data rate voice call across bands. If anything, higher frequencies usually imply a denser network of base stations (since radio propagation is somewhat worse), which means your phone needs to transmit less in the end since there's less distance to cover. For example, GSM at 900 MHz had a maximum mobile EIRP of 2W, while at 1800 MHz it was only 1W (at the same channel bandwidth).
dehrmann 3y ago
lxgr explained why this isn't really the case on the radio side. What you're actually experiencing is you went from using a phone that had no backlit screen, no apps, no OTA app updates, no push notifications, no AI-enhanced photos, and a toy CPU to a full-fledged computer in your pocket.
vel0city 3y ago
Battery usage and frequency have practically no correlation. I've got HF gear (things running at just a few MHz) that use car batteries to run a few hours. I've got 2.4GHz stuff designed to run off practically a watch battery and for their use case last weeks. And either way phones running on 4G LTE or 5G are largely using the same frequencies as before. Few phones actually connect to those ultra wideband networks for any notable percentage of the time. Most of the time they're connecting to 4G/5G towers operating around the same older GSM bands. Those earlier StarTAC phones and the Nokia 5110 ran at ~800-1900MHz. A modern 5G phone on T-Mobile US (Band n71) will operate on 600MHz. On your logic, a modern 5G phone on T-Mobile should work much longer than many older phones.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

My main concern with these higher frequency connections is that they require a lot more power to run. So we can’t have phones that will last weeks without charging.

loloquwowndueo 3y ago

Turn off cellular and wifi on your phone. I bet it won’t last more than a few days anyway. I don’t think radio power consumption is the barrier keeping us from weeks-long battery life.

Izkata 3y ago
I actually did this with my old Android phone earlier this summer after getting my new one. Under normal use I had to charge it every day, with Airplane Mode on (and, granted, not using it) the battery lasted like 3 or 4 weeks.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  > and, granted, not using it Well sure, then it's like a tablet in standby, which similarly can last a month or so. But it's not going to last more than a day or two if you've got the screen on, playing games, watching movies, using apps offline.
timschmidt 3y ago
Installing a version of Android without Google Play Services running constantly in the background effectively doubles handset battery life in my experience. Disabling radios can do that again if the device is rarely used.
- gst 3y ago
  Slightly offtopic but related: One of my mobile providers supports configuring public (non firewalled) IP addresses for mobile devices and when choosing that option my phone battery drains very significantly faster than otherwise. I suspect it's because all the random packets that arrive every second or so on the public interface (when NAT and firewall are disabled) either cause the radio to use a lot more battery or prevent the CPU from going into sleep mode (or both of that).
  - lxgr 3y ago
    I've been wondering about that! A long time ago, I had a phone plan like that as well (in fact, a public IPv4 was the only option), and I was wondering if random port scanning would eventually use up all of my data allowance. Turns out stateful firewalls aren't just a security factor on mobile internet connections.
    - korhojoa 3y ago
      I've luckily mostly been on unlimited data plans, so I don't know about it using up your data, but I guess it would? Your device is sending and receiving data. I don't think there's a distinction for externally made connections, otherwise vpn tunnels would have been really popular. I did have an experience with my phone being suddenly used by random internet users. I had ampache running on my n900 (maemo/debian-based) and somebody found it on the internet and started streaming my music. :D I had a higher-than-normal amount of battery usage for a few days so I decided to see what's using it and discovered that my music was being played and downloaded.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    That reminds me of when I had a computer with spinning rust hard drives on my desk in grad school. At some point I was trying to focus but there was a periodic, roughly once a second hard drive noise that was driving me nuts. Went through the usual suspects at the time like the background locatedb updater, and eventually ended up finding that some bot was trying to ssh login once per second going down a list of passwords, and the errors were being logged to disk. Need I mention the computer had a public IP address?
- loloquwowndueo 3y ago
  So you go from 1 to 4 days. Still not “weeks” :)

lxgr 3y ago

> My main concern with these higher frequency connections is that they require a lot more power to run. That's generally not true. What does require more power is a higher data rate (which is often available only on higher frequency bands, due to there being more bandwidth), but there shouldn't be any meaningful difference for a constant data rate voice call across bands. If anything, higher frequencies usually imply a denser network of base stations (since radio propagation is somewhat worse), which means your phone needs to transmit less in the end since there's less distance to cover. For example, GSM at 900 MHz had a maximum mobile EIRP of 2W, while at 1800 MHz it was only 1W (at the same channel bandwidth).

dehrmann 3y ago

lxgr explained why this isn't really the case on the radio side. What you're actually experiencing is you went from using a phone that had no backlit screen, no apps, no OTA app updates, no push notifications, no AI-enhanced photos, and a toy CPU to a full-fledged computer in your pocket.

vel0city 3y ago

Battery usage and frequency have practically no correlation. I've got HF gear (things running at just a few MHz) that use car batteries to run a few hours. I've got 2.4GHz stuff designed to run off practically a watch battery and for their use case last weeks. And either way phones running on 4G LTE or 5G are largely using the same frequencies as before. Few phones actually connect to those ultra wideband networks for any notable percentage of the time. Most of the time they're connecting to 4G/5G towers operating around the same older GSM bands. Those earlier StarTAC phones and the Nokia 5110 ran at ~800-1900MHz. A modern 5G phone on T-Mobile US (Band n71) will operate on 600MHz. On your logic, a modern 5G phone on T-Mobile should work much longer than many older phones.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]