A mobile wireless device adapts receive diversity during discontinuous reception based on downlink signal quality, page indicators and page messages. When the downlink signal quality exceeds a pre-determined threshold, the mobile wireless device decodes a page indicator channel through an initial antenna, and otherwise, decodes a paging channel through the initial antenna without decoding the page indicator channel. The mobile wireless device switches to decoding the paging channel through an alternate antenna when a page indicator decodes as an erasure. When a paging message received through a single antenna decodes with an incorrect error checking code, the mobile wireless devices enables receive diversity through multiple antennas for subsequent decoding. The mobile wireless device switches between single antenna reception and multiple antenna reception based on tracking multiple consecutive error checking code failures and successes.