Sudden power drain - any ideas?

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David G. Imber - 28 Apr 2006 07:22 GMT

    Sorry to bring this up again, but I'd thought the problem was
beat. It's happened again.

    The phone is my wife's Sanyo 4920. The battery is brand new.
The phone has been put through diagnostics and techs claimed it passed
the full complement of tests, including charging tests.

    Three times now the battery has run down to completely empty
within a matter of hours of being fully charged. But these events were
random, and between the events the phone behaved perfectly normally,
retaining its charge as long or longer than my 4920 with a somewhat
less new battery.

    I can't imagine what's going on here. Has anyone ever heard of
this?

    Thanks in advance, DGI

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Ivan Skivar - 28 Apr 2006 10:44 GMT

I had similar problems with a new Samsung phone. It turned out to be
faulty. I learned this when took it to the Sprint store. They replaced
it immediately. They didn't have a refurbished phone in that model so
they gave me a new one. I was very pleased with the way they treated me.

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David G. Imber - 28 Apr 2006 17:57 GMT

>I had similar problems with a new Samsung phone. It turned out to be
>faulty. I learned this when took it to the Sprint store. They replaced
>it immediately. They didn't have a refurbished phone in that model so
>they gave me a new one. I was very pleased with the way they treated me.

    I've had positive experiences with immediate replacement as
well, but that was under warranty and I don't carry the insurance.

    However, I did have the phone tested and nothing faulty was
found.

    DGI

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Isaiah Beard - 28 Apr 2006 13:46 GMT

> Sorry to bring this up again, but I'd thought the problem was
> beat. It's happened again.
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> I can't imagine what's going on here. Has anyone ever heard of
> this?

Has this phone been replaced at any point? Or was ti just the battery?

There's two possibilities here. Either the phone is faulty, or there's
a network related problem. If the phone is faulty, a replacement should
do the trick.

As for the network, what kind of signal are you getting? Does signal
strength fluctuate during the day? If at any point you wind up in a
fringe weak signal area, or you lose signal completely, any CDMA phone
will burn through its battery as it searches for a signal to lock onto.
And if roaming, the phone will still use slightly more energy as it
periodically checks for a home signal (and will expend a LOT of energy
if it's roaming in AMPS mode).

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David G. Imber - 28 Apr 2006 18:19 GMT

>Has this phone been replaced at any point? Or was ti just the battery?

This phone actually IS a refurb. I bought two when they came
out in June '04, and my wife's failed one diagnostic test some three
months later (when having a firmware update). She's been using this
refurb. since with no problems at all. This happened with the old
battery, and I thought that was the problem, so I got a new one.

>There's two possibilities here. Either the phone is faulty, or there's
>a network related problem. If the phone is faulty, a replacement should
>do the trick.

Just had diagnostics done at the local store and was told that
it passed all tests. I suppose I could run it through the testing
again, but if the techs found no fault I'm not sure what good that'd
do. The phone is no longer under warranty.

Now bear in mind that we both use the same phone under exactly
the same conditions, so network problems should not affect only one
adversely (I don't think).

>As for the network, what kind of signal are you getting? Does signal
>strength fluctuate during the day?

No, that's all consistent and trackable. For a while I thought
that my wife might have been keeping hers somewhere (such as next to a
large power source) that was zapping signal away from it. But when
this recently happened again, she was definitely not. Phones are set
to "Sprint pcs only"

>fringe weak signal area, or you lose signal completely, any CDMA phone
>will burn through its battery as it searches for a signal to lock onto.
> And if roaming, the phone will still use slightly more energy as it
>periodically checks for a home signal (and will expend a LOT of energy
>if it's roaming in AMPS mode).

All signs point to a fault in the phone's hardware, it's just
that they didn't see one. That's the frustration. Thanks for your
advice.

DGI

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Isaiah Beard - 28 Apr 2006 19:07 GMT

>> There's two possibilities here. Either the phone is faulty, or there's
>> a network related problem. If the phone is faulty, a replacement should
>> do the trick.
>
> Just had diagnostics done at the local store and was told that
> it passed all tests.

Unfortunately for the problem you're having, I doubt their diagnostics
would have uncovered the fault. The Handset Performance tests that are
done at the store are geared towards measuring RF performance and phone
functionality. It's highly doubtful they did any meaningful test to
determine power consumption or battery capacity.

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Thomas T. Veldhouse - 28 Apr 2006 21:18 GMT

> Sorry to bring this up again, but I'd thought the problem was
> beat. It's happened again.
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
>
> Thanks in advance, DGI

Roaming analog ... put the phone in "Sprint PCS Only" mode.

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David G. Imber - 29 Apr 2006 09:56 GMT

>Roaming analog ... put the phone in "Sprint PCS Only" mode.

Both phones have always been in "SPCS Only" mode.

Thanks anyway. DGI

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