2G (not 3G) internet not available when LTE feature button is available?

Thank you, KiltedTim.

It's bad to read that!

Unfortunatelly that's not true. 3G drains battery very fast (or at least faster than 2G). LTE even worst.

I've already made my own tests. 2G is the perfect solution.

If 3G is turned on all the time my phone energy drops before 12 working hours :\

By the way, I'm located @Lisbon, Portugal and I'm using Vodafone carrier.

Bought directly from Vodafone carrier. It's locked to Vodafone.

As you can see below, phone is spending about 10% battery/hour with 3G on which corresponds to the 12 hours (more or less) autonomy I wrote before. At last screenshot, I made LTE on just to show that there is no more buttons (LTE on or off).

By the way, BT is allways on too because of car hands free system. But BT is not the problem at all. The real problem is 3G (or higher) connection. It drains battery very fast.

I use Gmail account to aggregate all my email boxes. iPhone connects to Gmail using an exchange connection.

But this happens on my iPhone 4S too.

The problem is 3G, definitely. If I turn cellular connections off and use only WIFI, battery will be fine until the end of the day.

That's why I need 2G. 2G is lighter.

Thank you anyway 😉

Hi Deggie.

Well, I followed this tips lists:

http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

http://www.imore.com/how-fix-battery-life-problems-ios-6-or-iphone-5

Mainly I turned off push notifications and location services for most of the apps and turned off widgets (stocks, weather and facebook post widget).

Also, I'll start to kill some background apps after use like voip, music and navigation apps (it's seems there is some kind of exception regarding resources they can use when in background - http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20130124092557493)

I usually do not kill any app since iOS is knew as one of the best OS managing background apps resources consumption. More, some recent OSs learn some of the iOS procedures to manage memory and other resources. But it seems there are exceptions, so I'll start to kill them.

This is an additional effort I would like to avoid, but it seems I can't.

btw, there is a way to have shell access to place some monitoring tasks on a NON jailbreaked iPhone?

Regards

KiltedTim is right!

Some time after new iPhone setup or iOS reinstall, carrier sends instrutions about LTE availability and/or capability and iOS acts in acordance by switching to 3G/LTE button instead of 2G/3G button.

Is a fact: this change occurs after carrier notification. Any way, iOS should have a way to use the 3 connection types as per user will. Everyone knows iPhone battery is a struggle issue (this is a problem common to every smartphone which have big displays and great CPU capabilities) and also everyone knows 3G and LTE modems drains battery. To send and receive ordinary emails while phone is in the pocket, 2G is more than enough.

Apple, think about it.

It makes sense in the future, KiltedTim.

At this point, that's not a common reality. There are lots of remote zones which only have GPRS/EDGE connection. I have a 4G/LTE data SIM in my car and 2G is not so uncommon while I'm traveling outside cities.

Any way, in my opinion, this is an iOS network settings interface limitation. There was not considered another button neither a 3 position button is available at all. If, and while resources are available, why not use them if user wants to?!

Same way, everything in the iOS was designed to have a permanent internet connection, from the scratch. They just don't care if user wants it or not!

Finally iOS 7 introduced a quick wi-fi on/off switch but not a quick carrier data traffic on/off switch as you can find in Android, for instance. I know this 'permanent internet connection' makes sense on modern smartphones but there are markets around the world where carrier data traffic is yet very very expensive. Even here in Europe there are countries where carrier data traffic is quite expensive! This should be an user option. Always.

Any way... I'm very happy with my iPhone, even as is! 😝