Signal strength while tethering
 

After fiddling with networkmanager and modemmanager on my system, bluetooth tethering with my N900 works like a charm. The only problem is the battery drainage.

Usually, I get 3 or 4 bars and 3G where I am. Dialing via bluetooth gets me 5 bars and 3.5G. While this is very good in terms of connection speed, it only lasts for 4 hours or so before my battery is dead and the phone shuts down.
Is there some way to influence the power put to the antenna to stay instead of going for the very best? I noticed that when dialing the regular 3G connection on my N900 (i.e. not tethering via BT), the reception does not get better and I don't have 3.5G over 3G.

Re: Signal strength while tethering
 

you're saying you get a better 3G signal when using a bluetooth headset? I don't understand what you're talking about. The signal strength is affected by the orientation of the phone mainly. Having a lower signal should increase battery usage. Using bluetooth increases battery usage. What more do you need to know?

Re: Signal strength while tethering
 

Putting the phone online: dialing my ISP's connection on the phone, my reception stays the same. Battery usage stays the same.

Putting my laptop online: using the bluetooth DUN profile to dial the connection and having everything sent via bluetooth, the battery drains horribly.

The way I understand it, lower reception causes higher power consumption because there's more power put to the antenna to get a better signal. So normally, I'd have 3 bars with the normal amount of power for the antenna. However, with BT tethering, the antenna uses even more power to get me from 3 bars to 5 bars and from 3G to 3.5G.

About the orientation: The phone is at the very same position it is when not used to go online with my laptop.

Re: Signal strength while tethering
 

Re: Signal strength while tethering
 

USB tethering under Linux works fine as well, yes. However, reading up on batteries because of loading via USB, I see that my fear of memory effects and incomplete loading cycles seems irrational. Thanks for the hint ;)

Guess I'll have my USB cable with me next time.

Re: Signal strength while tethering
 

The bluetooth PAN tethering dosen't seem to drain as much power as you've described, you may try: [HOWTO] N900 Bluetooth-PAN Tethering (N900 supplies Internet Access for PC)

(The above article is about PC connecting to internet via bluetooth PAN tethering, which is the opposite of what you need. However, once the PAN is established, with a bit of knowledge in networking, the reverse is not that difficult to achieve)

Re: Signal strength while tethering
 

Thanks for the tip, but I'll stay with the DUN profile for now.

/edit: Got it set up. Setting everything to snap in on my N900 automatically after the PAN connection has been established doesn't work for now, but oh well...