Government Alerts (AT&T) + MicroCell = dead battery

I was just wondering with the release of the AT&T Carrier update 14.2 if that made any change in the behavior of your iPhones and the Microcell?

My phone started loosing charge as soon as the "Carrier Update" installed. I reset the phone and the phone held charge once again. Today (6/28/2013) The phone did the "Carrier Update" again, and again the battery imediately started to drain. I reset the phone again, and again the phone is holding a charge.

Phone is an iPhone 4 with AT&T Problem started in June 2013.

Update: Got my iPhone 5 last night. I was hoping it would eliminate the need for the MC. But the 5 doesn't pick up 4G as well as the 4S. Where my daughter's 4S has 2 bars, I have 1. Where she has 1, I have "no carrier." Very disappointing.

Which has what to do with the topic, exactly?

Please don't threadjack.

It's relevant in the sense that going to a 5 won't necessarily eliminate the need for a Micro Cell tower, thus you could be back to dead battery problems.

OK. So it's not relevant AT ALL.

trebber,

I've been looking around for further information about the cupdate 14.2, and even going to an AT&T forum, there is mixed info. An AT&T CS rep makes the statement that it is the same as the 14.1, it was done to make sure everyone had the info. THAT, I find to be a load of crap.

My phone received the 14.2 update and I still have the Notifications. I did start having calendar sync problems with my Outlook yesterday and have spent the entire day wiping and reinstalling iTunes, wiping a phone, wiping Outlook, and every once in a while cussing up a storm. I seem to have the Outlook calendar sync fixed. It was still syncing everything else, like contacts and notes, but the calendar sync broke.

However, back to the carrier update, it would be nice if AT&T was forward about information.

Just adding another report of massive battery drain after getting the carrier update.

iPhone 4S. iOS 6.1.3. Phone is charged overnight and at 100% battery level when I leave for work in the morning.

I noticed that I received the 14.2 carrier update this morning around 7:00AM when I went to open passbook. I didn't think much of it and closed all apps as usual before heading into work.

Around noon I went to set a timer on the phone and noticed the battery was at 50% which wasn't normal.

I then went to check the temperature outside before heading out to lunch (it was a bit warm today) and the weather channel app couldn't connect. I tried to open the mail app and it couldn't connect either so I rebooted the phone and that seemed to resolve the connectivity issues.

I left work at 4:00pm and the battery was down to 35%. Prior to today my battery was normally around 60%-70% when I leave at 4:00pm. I only checked the phone a few times today so wasn't expecting it to be that low.

After I got home I performed the Reset Network Settings and the reboot that goes along with the reset. That didn't seem to help but I need to charge the phone back up to full to get a better estimate for how fast the battery is dropping.

Signal strength at my desk is normally 1 or 2 bars which I know can drain the battery faster than if I had a strong signal but the signal strength at my desk has always been low. Maybe the carrier update is causing the phone to hunt differently than in the previous version? Or maybe the AT&T tower(s) in the area were confusing the phone causing it to operate at full power or it was connecting to a tower farther away. There's always so many variables but it seems odd to happen on the same day as an update that was sent to the phone. It could just be a conincidence. We'll see.

I did run iOS 7.0 beta 1 for almost two weeks and had the same rapid battery drain which is one reason I restored back to iOS 6.1.3 to get my normal battery life back (which it did for several days until the carrier update today). Maybe iOS 7.0 has some of the same network functionality already enabled that was enabled in 6.1.3 by the new carrier update? Just a WAG since nobody really seems to know what iOS is doing differently after the update.

And no, I do not have a microcell. :-)

Anyway, I just thought I would post my experience related to my carrier update today and how rapidly my battery drained after the update. I'll try to check in tomorrow if anything changes.

trebber wrote:

" ...but it seems odd to happen on the same day as an update that was sent to the phone. It could just be a conincidence."

Horse. Head. Need I say more?

Somehow I don't think you are referring to that end of the animal. I agree it's unlikely to just be a coincidence. ;-)

It's still early in the day, but so far the phone has been been off the charger for 90 minutes and is still at 100%. All I did yesterday evening was reset the network settings and rebooted a total of three times, once after the connection issues again after the reset and again before bed for the heck of it. Maybe that helped or maybe it was something AT&T fixed in my area last night related to the new functionality after identifying the issue?