5G Battery drain

Parry

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I own the samsung note 10 plus 5g , it's a great phone and it has the best battery life of any phone I have ever owned .
I regularly have 50-60 % battery at the end of a day .
Untill this week I had only had the chance to try out 5g once.
I was working in Cardiff last month for only 4 hours or so but in this time I was able to run 5 speed tests in 5 different locations around cardiff .
Download speeds were good but not great, between 120 to 300 at best ,the down side to this was battery usage.
During speed tests I would lose 3%, but more concerning was the battery drain when the phone was in standby.
I lost 70% of battery life in the 4 hours of being in cardiff which did include 5 speed tests .
This was my first experience of 5g on my phone and I was not impressed .
This week i started a new job in a very small town which has full 5g coverage .
On Monday I started my new job and had forgotten all about 5g and the 5g experience in cardiff the month before , at around 10am having been in this 5g area for 2 hours I pulled out my phone to check the time and noticed the phone was very warm to the touch.
Then I remembered 5g , i check my battery percentage and was shocked to see I was on 70% already.
I never used the phone all day and my 5pm my phone was on 18% , this was just from standby.
The next day I disable 5g before getting to work and by 5pm this day I had 74% left .
I spoke to ee technical support and samsung technical support about this and they were both clueless saying the phone is working normally.
I did a factory reset and my FW is updated and it's still same .
As is Samsungs application of 5g in my note 10 plus is unusable .
If your thinking about buying into 5g I would recommend you think again .
The technology is clearly not ready yet .
If anyone else is having a better 5g experience then I can you let me know .
 
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This is possibly a good steer but subject to more information. The write up seems to miss out what your phone was doing for seven hours from 10am to 5pm. There is a suggestion of data remaining switched on and background app download / update activity draining the battery. I can believe the 5G rnodem is less battery efficient at this early adoption point but not sure 5G itself solely explains the battery usage during seven hours of no reported activity
 
Screenshot_20191029-170938_Settings.jpg


I checked battery usage expecting to see some like cell using the battery but what is using draining the power is hidden from view .
No back ground data was used ,one explanation by ee techy was the phone must been in a weak 5g area and constantly searching for a sign .
This was nonsense as did a download test and got 500mb with upload of 50mb and the phone display showed full 5g bars.
I know line of site is a problem with 5g but from my testing around the village the work relocation is the centre of the 5g signal but I'm was unable to spot the mast .
On the two days I tested this by just leaving the phone all day in standby the was nothing but awaiting incoming signals .
That only difference in my tests was 5g enabled and then say two disabled .
It's no wonder Apple have held off with 5g as they did with 3g untill they had chips energy efficient enough to do the decoding without killing the battery life .
 
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I would also like to say this phone is garbage for phone signal .
Monday tonight is at a dance show which my daughter was in , I was there with 3 other family members .
All 4 of us are on EE yet in the interval I was the only one unable to surf the web ***.
The other phones on EE were google pixel 3a, samsung s9 and an iPhone 10.
They had 4g I had Jack shit lol.
This is great for multimedia but crap as a phone lol.
Also another guy at my work got the same phone on ee and and he has also had to disable 5g or his battery would not last 9 hours.

So be warned dont buy the note 10 5g
 
You can always turn the 5G off in the settings. I have one but on Vodafone. No issues with signal strength ( my wife has iPhone 11 pro and Has the same strength reception unless they both bad :) ) in regards to 5G battery drain I have noticed that if I'm in the area where 5G is strong like central London than I don't have issues with battery but when the 5g signal is not strong it drains battery like crazy so I turn it off and use 4g signal only.
 
I'm have no choice but to disable 5g if want the phone to last a day at work, so there was no point in getting a 5g phone.
5g signal has full bars at my work and dl 500mb so signal strength is not an issue.
4g is not a problem is good signal strength areas.
Its gone in to EE and repair today as they said it must be faulty.
The problem is a guy at work has the same phone and is getting the same problems so I'm expecting no change in phone when it's returned to me.
I think I'll sell it and buy another phone not made by Samsung.
 
Sorry to hear you are having issues with your phone. I agree with you in regards to 5G. Even more so on Vodafone as it is not as fast as EE. My friend has one on ee and couple of days ago in Waterloo station had 600mb speed and I couldn't even get 5g. The fastest I got was around 200mb. In regards to battery life, even if I don't use 5g there is no chance the phone can last all day. I need to charge it after 4-5 sot but I use my phone for work the whole day so I'm ok with charging it once especially that charging is pretty quick. Hope you will find the phone that meets your criteria.
 
After mulling on the the Note 10 plus 5G, for some time, and hearing all the negative stuff about battery life re 5G etc, I decided to buy a stop gap phone. Bought a new sammy A70 for £220 and can't fault it and saved myself a shedload.
 
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