Re:Carbon footprint of unwanted data use by smartphones
by asdff on Thursday September 15, 2022 @04:38PM
(#32858137)
The phone looking for signal issue could have been solved when cellphones first came out even. The phone internally knows what cell tower its pinging. You flag ones around the fringes of known no service areas like a natural park. If the user hikes off into the woods, the phone is capable of knowing its going into a no service area based on the id of last cell tower its pinged and the fact that its just lost signal for longer than 30 seconds. At which point it could switch to hunting for signal every 10 minutes or something with better compromises for battery life and realistic expectations given the area.
This annoys the absolute hell out of me.
> Sometimes I just throw the device in airplaine mode for a while if I am busy or overnight.
I have made a habit of doing the same when I'm going somewhere remote that doesn't have service, else the phone will thrash the battery to death vainly searching for signal.