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Forum Discussion
RBR50, Draining mobile phone and tablet battery
Issue: Have new Orbi router and satellite. Install was vanilla - no issues. Updated firmware on both components to latest (a week ago). Worked as advertised- great, as a matter of fact. However, it wasn't long before we noticed battery life on our Samsung Note 5s were severely diminished! (one on Verizon, the other on US Cellular). It appeared the Verizon 3G iPad was also impacted. Example: Went to bed with phone at 100% on nightstand- woke up and it was dead. Tried turning off Orbi satellite, and thought it might have improved a little. Went back to old router (Netgear N600/WNDR3400) and the problem went away. Example: Went to bed with phone at 78% and woke up and it was at 70%. What is going on? Is there a setting that will fix this??
31 Replies
I have the same thing happened on my Samsung Galaxy Tab and S7 .
Also checked on HP spectre laptop.
The battery drain in unusual.
Please provide a fix as the problem exist on all Orbi devices.
Saw the problem for a while with a Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone late last year.
I'm not saying it is not an Orbi problem, but I remember trying a few things on the S7 end and it seemed to help alot.
It is worth reseting your network settings, Settings > Backup and reset > Reset network settings > Reset Settings and then connecting and putting the password for the Wi-Fi in again from scratch.
A setting on the phone, telling it to not keep trying to switch to a better connection, SMART network switch turned to OFF option.
If you think it is due to connecting and disconnecting of the Wi-Fi, you could also try to set the wifi to stay always on, even when during sleep, which might seem counter-intuitive, but might correct the problem: Settings > Wi-Fi> More, look for Keep Wi-Fi on During Sleep, and set it to Always.
I forgot to mention that also during this time period, I also lowered the transmit power on the Orbi system for the 2.4 Ghz band down to 25 percent. This also might have helped with the problem at my place where the Orbi is installed.
- I didn't state it was the problem of the S7, I just stated somethings that mitigated the problem for me. I'm sure the firmware for the Orbi will get better, but they take forever between releases and the return period after buying the equipment is not all that long.
Hi,
I do understand it but as your intentions are good you are not really helping on the contrary you are diverting from the main issue and present it as solution when it's not.
Please let the Netgear experts answer this issue and come up with a real fix to it.
Thx
I understand that you want an answer to your issue, but I don't think you understand how "community" message boards work. If fact, I think you are not really helping, on the contrary I think you are diverting from the purpose for "community" message boards and attempting to shut down opinions and experiences of its members.
Please let "community" members participate in the "community" forums.
If you don't want input from the "community" you should stick to support tickets with official Netgear support.
Thank you.
Minor update: I tried some of ideas from loomis1975 (Thanks). I put the Orbi Router/Satellite back online. I did the network reset on the Verizon Galaxy Note 5. I found that the "Smart" connect option was already off. I did my overnight nightstand test: Went to bed @ 100%, and it was 52% in the morning. This is an improvement (and a reasonable thing to do to get it). However, I'm still STILL looking for the solution that will give the battery performance I had with my old router! I guess my next step is to call NG tech support, OR just return the Orbi.
- Fair enough. A firmware fix would be welcome, but I could not live with the battery on the S7 draining so quickly, so I looked into it and saw the log had hundreds of connections from the phone IP address and determined that it was also switching bands all the time as well when reconnecting. I surmised this activity was what caused the battery to be used so quickly. As far as I know they have been working on the connecting and reconnecting issue for over 3 months now. My first support ticket on it is from October I think. There are other threads discussing it. My S7 now has approximately the same battery behavior in standby mode as a Google Pixel and Windows Lumia 950. Maybe my S7 is defective in a good way now and the things I tried to mitigate the disconnections were window dressing.
For reference, at another place where I have Linksys Velop setup, I have not experienced any battery draining behaviors, but the wireless backhaul on the Velop isn't nearly as fast or penetrating as the Orbi. That location has Wi-Fi friendly building materials and slower internet provider, so it works out very well.I just upgraded from an LG android to an S7... Not putting blame on either end of the phone - router combo but sometihing isn't right.
( first I thought it was just me )
My LG would use 10% max over night sitting 10 feet from the Orbi main router.. My S7 would drain about 40% over night
If it was the screen, I could understand , but sitting in standby with just wifi/data on was weird.
Five days of playing with settings, a few days learning the phone, turning extra junk, off drain was still high...
so last night, i just turned off the wifi leaving data on.
This morning it was down only 2% from full.... Interesting to say the least.
( mind that I haven't looked into why yet, just an obsevation )
I am hitting the same battery drain issue with my Galaxy Note 5. This was not an issue with my previous router. Last few nights the phone was left with about 50% battery remaining and woke up to a dead phone. WIFI signal is strong with the satellite sitting in the next room over.
I have noticed that a couple times yesterday the satellite LED ring turned solid blue instead of off. It stayed solid blue for a few minutes before turning back off. Not sure if this is related, but could be that the satellite is restarting?
- Thanks for the swift response.
No I haven't turned off any of the marketed benefits of the product as its intended to work the way NetGear marketed it. If I turn off these features what makes it better than a normal router?
I believe it's a confirmed issue, thx for confirming because when I switch back to an older router I have no issues. Right now I have a lemon of a product from NetGear, the last Netgear product I bought 10 years ago had problems too, seems like a theme to me.
When is a fix coming? Having a S7 edge and a galaxy tab s2, I do not experience any battery drain with orbi.
Beam forming is enabled and MUMIMO is disabled.
firmware version V1.8.0.6.
the only thing I can't manage to work, is registering for a free Netgear account for Dynamic DNS
I have the same problem with my LG G4. Orbi is at V1.9.1.12. The battery drain on my phone is going so fast I can see the % drop as I keep watching. A fully charged phone in the morning barely lasts until lunch time when I am at home and not even using it very much. Before, and when I am not at home, on a typical day it easily lasts through the day with 40% or more left when I go to bed (and plug in the charger). This morning, it didn't even get fully charged overnight.
The main battery drainer according to the battery menu on the phone says simply "Android Operating System" so that is not helping much. The details for Android Operating System specify "keep awake" for excessive times (almost the whole time from the moment it got unplugged).
I also notice the wifi range symbol in the top bar "jumping" a lot, as if it switching between networks with differing signal strength. Opening the wifi menu however it is ever connected to the same network (the Orbi wifi), so that must be between different connections to the Orbi network. It even does this when I am clearly much closer to one of the units, so my guess is (but I cannot back this statement up because I cannot tell the difference from the phone) that the switching is more between the 2.4 and 5 Ghz networks than it is between the main router and the satellite. There are also hardly any other wifi signals around that could have been disturbing.
I have uninstalled the Wifi Prioritizer app I used before, both because I hoped I wouldn't need it any longer now owning an Orbi, and to rule it out as a cause of these issues.
I have tried with beamforming and mu-mimo both off, both on, and with beamforming off and mu-mimo on, but none of these combinations made a difference. At this point I am assuming that the LG G4 (and from what I am reading in this thread, also other phones) somehow does not play well with having a 2.4 and 5 Ghz network with the same SSID.
If I find time this weekend I plan on tinkering with turning the transmit power for either down completely and see if that helps, just to try and pinpoint a cause.
- Just upgraded to v19112 a few days ago. Will be testing to see if the drain persists, I did notice alot of actual drops and switching. Eg: my phone reconnects to the Orbi vs being seamless.
I have completely turned off the 2.4GHz radio on the Orbi since I don't have any legacy devices and also disable beam forming and MUMIMO and all this has seemed to help with the battery drain somewhat but again these are only bandaids to a bigger problem the root cause still need to be addressed by Engineering.
I have been dealing with this issue since February purchase (2017). It looks like my specific use case issue went away when I updated my Samsung Galexy Note 5 OS from 6.0.1 Marshmallow to 7.0 Nougat (not a recomendation from Netgear). In fact, it seems that the Orbi/Nougat combination is draining the battery even less that the Netgear N600/Marshmallow setup I had before. (Of course, that could be related to any number of Nougat system efficiencies.) The open ticket I had with Netgear for my particular situation was closed. We have another Note 5 from another carrier that isn't ready to be upgraded to Nougat that is still experiencing the problem. I don't believe that the root cause of the issue was necessarily addressed, which is probably some kind of backward compatibility thing.
