Brainstorm

3g throttler (battery saver)

Posted on 2009-11-14 12:22 UTC by Chris Phillips. Status: Under consideration, Categories: System.

A 2G connection is shown to be less power hungry than 3G. Since the N900 is an 'always on' data device, using 2G as its main source of data for low data intense applications (email/widgets) would make sense. However if you wanted to say surf the internet/stream music, 2G is just too slow.

Solutions for this brainstorm

Solution #1: 3g activation when selected applications opened

Posted on 2009-11-14 12:34 UTC by Chris Phillips.

An application that keeps the the default GSM connection as 2G that then switches to a 'heavy data mode' (3g/wifi) when (user) specified applications are opened (eg internet browser, spotify, internet radio etc). This would increase battery life considerably.

Solution #2: 2G for standby, 3G when active mode

Posted on 2009-11-17 17:00 UTC by thomas p.

in hypothetical settings --> power management (or somewhere else): an option to enable "prefer 2G connections". this should adhere to the following logic:

if standby mode, then disable 3G (after n minutes)
if standby mode and 2G data unavailable, activate 3G. fallback to 2G if possible.
if active mode, enable 3G.

and for those cases when power saving is most important, an option to completely disable 3G.

Solution #3: Desktop applet

Posted on 2009-12-03 13:24 UTC by Ville Reijonen.

applet on the desktop to switch between 3g and 2g

Solution #4: 2G on WiFi; 3G otherwise

Posted on 2010-10-14 21:33 UTC by Steve Dommett.

It would be beneficial for battery life to have an option to switch automatically to 2G when connected to WiFi, and to revert to 3G when WiFi is no longer available.

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