Microcell & batter drain

[jfalkingham]

Hi,

Just wanted to post some interesting findings. I have inconsistent bars in my house, between 3-5 from my home office. That is good enough for calls, etc.. not a lot of drops at all. I was offered a free microcell, hooked it up, got it active and my bars stay a solid 5 and it says "MicroCell" on my torch.

An interesting thing happens though, my battery drains dramatically through the day, like 7 hours and I need to charge. I've uninstalled a lot of apps, because maybe they were the culprit, I even brought it back to stock and same problem. Tried a new battery, same result.

I never thought it could be tied to the microcell, I mean, you are getting a strong signal, so it should not have to work as hard right? Well, my findings prove otherwise. Once I unplugged the microcell, my battery life jumped back to 1.5 days like it always has (with heavy use). Not sure what was going on, but a guess is the BlackBerry was always switching between the real network and the microcell. So my advice, only use the microcell if you have a confirmed weak signal, it was not worth it for me.

[Mister Xiado]

Strong signal saves power, but high-frequency signal requires more power from the get-go. The transceivers are doing more "things" per second.