Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working • Hacker News Board

Re: Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

#21

Post by lxgr » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 2:51 AM UTC

beretguy wrote: post #8

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.

> 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).

Re: Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

#22

Post by lxgr » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 2:53 AM UTC

gst wrote: post #14

timschmidt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

#23

Post by lxgr » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 2:57 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #20

One change I noticed from LTE to VoLTE is that the line now goes silent when the coverage gets spotty. Before, you would hear bits and pieces. The benefit to that was that even if you were talking you could hear little bits coming through (including silence) and you would know that the other person probably couldn't hear you well. Now you just hear nothing, and have no idea.

> even if you were talking you could hear little bits coming through (including silence)

Do you mean comfort noise by any chance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_noise

I don't see why that strategy wouldn't work for VoLTE, but I don't doubt that some implementations might not have bothered.

Re: Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

#24

Post by edude03 » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 3:08 AM UTC

> newer phones like the Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016)

I know we are a more tech savvy crowd but is using a 7 year old feature phone really the best example to make this argument? I imagine that most people keep their phones closer to four years.

Re: Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

#25

Post by giantg2 » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 3:14 AM UTC

betaby wrote: post #2

Most of the USA is VoLTE-only for a ~year already. For other countries see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G#Phase-out

Yeah, my carrier forced me to upgrade two years ago when they went VoLTE-only.

Re: Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

#26

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 3:15 AM UTC

dmos62 wrote: post #16

MrRadar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New T-Mobile SIMs haven't been able to work in 2G phones for a bit now. If you have an older SIM that's still active you can use it in a 2G phone but they don't want new customers using non-VoLTE devices on their network. They also haven't invested in expandning their 2G footprint since about 2015 when their network was significantly smaller. The 2G service will be discounted in April.

I happen to have a newly bought T-Mobile prepaid SIM card. It offers limited "high speed data" (4G, 5G, etc) and unlimited "slow speed data" (2G, 3G). Once I ran out of "high speed data", my service was supposed to fallback to 2G, but it doesn't work. I asked why via customer support and the consultant said that they know that it doesn't work, even though they're selling it. Took me 60 minutes on the phone to get to…

[deleted]

Re: Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

#27

Post by numpad0 » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 3:16 AM UTC

dmos62 wrote: post #16

MrRadar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New T-Mobile SIMs haven't been able to work in 2G phones for a bit now. If you have an older SIM that's still active you can use it in a 2G phone but they don't want new customers using non-VoLTE devices on their network. They also haven't invested in expandning their 2G footprint since about 2015 when their network was significantly smaller. The 2G service will be discounted in April.

I happen to have a newly bought T-Mobile prepaid SIM card. It offers limited "high speed data" (4G, 5G, etc) and unlimited "slow speed data" (2G, 3G). Once I ran out of "high speed data", my service was supposed to fallback to 2G, but it doesn't work. I asked why via customer support and the consultant said that they know that it doesn't work, even though they're selling it. Took me 60 minutes on the phone to get to…

In case it actually meant unlimited data on actual 3G, the towers are not going to force downgrade to 3G just because the data plan had ran out. You’ll have to turn off LTE from phone’s settings app.

Re: Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

#28

Post by tass » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 3:16 AM UTC

fwmcbumcrumble wrote: post #18

dmos62 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I happen to have a newly bought T-Mobile prepaid SIM card. It offers limited "high speed data" (4G, 5G, etc) and unlimited "slow speed data" (2G, 3G). Once I ran out of "high speed data", my service was supposed to fallback to 2G, but it doesn't work. I asked why via customer support and the consultant said that they know that it doesn't work, even though they're selling it. Took me 60 minutes on the phone to get to…

You don't fall back to the actual 2g connection. You're supposed to fall back to 2g speeds aka 128kbps or 256kbps. You'll still be connected to LTE towers, just at painfully slow speeds.

Correct, it just feels like it’s not working because almost nothing is designed to function at such slow speeds (HN is one of the good ones though!)

Re: Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

#29

Post by loloquwowndueo » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 3:19 AM UTC

timschmidt wrote: post #13

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

So you go from 1 to 4 days. Still not “weeks” :)

Re: Voice-over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

#30

Post by cheekibreeki2 » Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 3:27 AM UTC

usr1106 wrote: post #5

betaby wrote: post #2

Most of the USA is VoLTE-only for a ~year already. For other countries see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G#Phase-out

No, the 2G network is still running at least for T-Mobile. I happened to check earlier today.

4/2/2024 is the planned shutdown.