This may sound like a bit of noob question but please hear me out. This is my first Android device and I'm coming from a iPhone 3G. I am having much worse battery life than I expected, even compared to a 2 year old battery in my iPhone. With the iPhone it was possible to disable 3G and just use EDGE to increase battery life, but EDGE is unacceptable for me. I also found that turning on WiFi seemed to increase battery life rather than running on 3G all the time, since I am always near WiFi. It seems like running two radios would use more power than running 1 but that was not my experience. I rationalized that by assuming the 3G radio had to broadcast its signal a much longer distance than the WiFi and therefor used more energy. So the more the iPhone used the lower power WiFi radio for data the better. Are my assumptions correct? Which radio uses more power? With my iPhone I left 3G and WiFi on all the time and never thought twice about it, at the end of the day I would have about half a battery left, with this Captivate I can barely make it through a day. I saw a suggestion in another thread to adjust the advanced WiFi setting to never disconnect WiFi to improve battery life, that person seems to make the same assumptions I have. Please let me know your thoughts. Thank you.
wifi uses less power then 3G does. When you turn on wifi and there is a network that you can connect to 3G will turn off.
Glad my assumptions were correct. So it would make sense then that if you were at a place where you knew you couldn't get WiFi it would save power to turn it off so it would stop searching. Do you agree that going into WiFi Settings -> Advanced -> WiFi Sleep policy and change "when screen turns off" to "Never" would help? So that all background data goes over wifi and not 3G?
nbarsotti said:
Glad my assumptions were correct. So it would make sense then that if you were at a place where you knew you couldn't get WiFi it would save power to turn it off so it would stop searching. Do you agree that going into WiFi Settings -> Advanced -> WiFi Sleep policy and change "when screen turns off" to "Never" would help? So that all background data goes over wifi and not 3G?
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Interesting, I have no "advanced" option under "WiFi Settings".
Push the menu button while in thet WiFi settings page and go to advanced.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
WiFi always being on wastes even more battery. Phone calls and texts still have to go through 3G.
kitsuneracer said:
Push the menu button while in thet WiFi settings page and go to advanced.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
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DOH!
Thank you!
That is the only inconsistency with android - when to look for more menus via the menu key.
spyz88 said:
WiFi always being on wastes even more battery. Phone calls and texts still have to go through 3G.
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I think it also depends how much data you are using. If you are streaming music or video - the battery should last longer with WiFi doing it - even if 3G is on.
If you are not doing much data, then the act of having 3G and WiFi on is counterproductive.
spyz88 said:
WiFi always being on wastes even more battery. Phone calls and texts still have to go through 3G.
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why? couldnt it just use regular edge for phone calls and text?
Related
What is with this? I 've gone through several HTC phones on the EVO and everytime I lose my wifi. Anyone can help?
When do you lose the Wi-Fi?
I use the wi-fi in my house and it will maintain a constant signal.
UNLESS
It goes to sleep mode, then it turns off the wi-fi as well.
Whenever I bring it out of sleep, it always has to re-connect.
I don't know if there is some registry setting you can set to keep wi-fi turned on.
I think the risk is that it will drain the battery much quicker though.
I'm using the MAPL build 2.60 beta for a Dash 3G and the battery life is incredible.
You can make it stay on by going to: Comm Manager>Settings>WLAN Settings>Power Mode and unchecking the "Auto turn off..." box. And yes, it does suck the battery like a vampire and makes the phone HOT! You can also adjust how long it will stay on for after LCD OFF.
Wifi question
Hi, before i drive myself mad, I am convinced that my phone uses gprs for data, not wifi. And my bills seem to agree with me.
When I use things like MyPhone, either connected to my PC or connected to my wifi at home, it seems to appear on my bill as a data charge, which would indicate that it is using the network??
Am I right, wrong or stupid? Any help greatly appreciated.
I saw several posts suggesting that leaving WiFi on where you have WiFi connection helps you to save the battery which I'm finding pretty strange. I thought WiFi actually drains battery faster then anything else. Are savings due to the fact that WiFi is more efficient then 3G or does it actually holds true that it saves battery?
All things being equal, Wi-Fi uses less power than 3G. Wi-Fi radio waves don't have to go as far, so they're easier to generate. When Wi-Fi is on, 3G is off, so you'll save power if you're actually transferring data.
A lot of programs will initiate data transfers by themselves when connected to Wi-Fi though, so perhaps that is why some will notice higher drain when Wi-Fi is on.
Also, if Wi-Fi is left on and you are on the move, your battery will drain since your phone is constantly searching for available networks.
Unless you've changed the settings, however, when your phone's screen it off it switches back to 3G to handle data.
artisticcheese said:
I saw several posts suggesting that leaving WiFi on where you have WiFi connection helps you to save the battery which I'm finding pretty strange. I thought WiFi actually drains battery faster then anything else. Are savings due to the fact that WiFi is more efficient then 3G or does it actually holds true that it saves battery?
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Yes, as Scotty said above me...
ScottyNuttz said:
All things being equal, Wi-Fi uses less power than 3G. Wi-Fi radio waves don't have to go as far, so they're easier to generate. When Wi-Fi is on, 3G is off, so you'll save power if you're actually transferring data.
Also, if Wi-Fi is left on and you are on the move, your battery will drain since your phone is constantly searching for available networks.
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This however, is untrue. At least for me. I run the leaked 2.2 and my WiFi is always on at home, my data connection is never active. I check this by dialing *3282# and hitting send.
ScottyNuttz said:
Unless you've changed the settings, however, when your phone's screen it off it switches back to 3G to handle data.
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When I have wifi switched on I lose around 5 to 10% an hour. With it off I lose 1 to 2%. I don't have anything set to sync differently via wifi. I only have a few apps that sync data and those are set to do so every 4 hours or so.
I have tried leaving it both on and off overnight to test this and every time I've left it off I woke up with a full battery. If I leave it on I have to charge again in the morning.
When I'm going out I turn wifi off so that my phone isn't constantly searching for signal.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
miztaken1312 said:
This however, is untrue. At least for me. I run the leaked 2.2 and my WiFi is always on at home, my data connection is never active. I check this by dialing *3282# and hitting send.
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In the Wi-Fi advanced settings (Hit Menu when in the normal wi-fi settings), there is a Wi-Fi Sleep Policy (which specifies when to switch from Wi-Fi to mobile data)
By default, my device was set to 'When screen turns off'. the other options were 'Never when plugged in' or 'Never', I switched mine to 'Never'. You should notice that when you turn your screen on, the wifi icon doesn't show up right away. Of course, I'm on 2.1, so this may be different in 2.2, but check it out.
For me, I get no cell signal in the building at work so I need to keep wifi on. If I turn it off my battery drains fast from the 3g radio constantly trying to lock on a signal.
It depends in the quality of your 3G connection, but all things equal I have seen that using WiFi instead of 3G does save battery, when the WiFi is connected of course. Anytime a radio is constantly searching for a signal or trying to hold a weak signal, power usage tends to go up.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
ScottyNuttz said:
All things being equal, Wi-Fi uses less power than 3G. Wi-Fi radio waves don't have to go as far, so they're easier to generate. When Wi-Fi is on, 3G is off, so you'll save power if you're actually transferring data.
A lot of programs will initiate data transfers by themselves when connected to Wi-Fi though, so perhaps that is why some will notice higher drain when Wi-Fi is on.
Also, if Wi-Fi is left on and you are on the move, your battery will drain since your phone is constantly searching for available networks.
Unless you've changed the settings, however, when your phone's screen it off it switches back to 3G to handle data.
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Check out Y5 Battery Saver.
This app turns your wifi on/off based on the cell towers that you are on. You just connect to wifi, enable the app, and it remembers what cell towers you were on while you were in range of that wifi location. as soon as you are off of those towers, it turns off wifi. to add new wifi locations, just disable the app, connect to the hot spot, and re-enable the app.
This gives you the best of both worlds. you get to save battery while you are using wifi and when you are out of range it doesn't continually search for new wifi networks to connect to.
ScottyNuttz said:
In the Wi-Fi advanced settings (Hit Menu when in the normal wi-fi settings), there is a Wi-Fi Sleep Policy (which specifies when to switch from Wi-Fi to mobile data)
By default, my device was set to 'When screen turns off'. the other options were 'Never when plugged in' or 'Never', I switched mine to 'Never'. You should notice that when you turn your screen on, the wifi icon doesn't show up right away. Of course, I'm on 2.1, so this may be different in 2.2, but check it out.
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Whenever I turn my screen on, my wifi icon is right there. No delay in it showing up. I don't remember ever changing the sleep policy when I updated so I believe this is the default behavior for 2.2
drwx said:
Check out Y5 Battery Saver.
This app turns your wifi on/off based on the cell towers that you are on. You just connect to wifi, enable the app, and it remembers what cell towers you were on while you were in range of that wifi location. as soon as you are off of those towers, it turns off wifi. to add new wifi locations, just disable the app, connect to the hot spot, and re-enable the app.
This gives you the best of both worlds. you get to save battery while you are using wifi and when you are out of range it doesn't continually search for new wifi networks to connect to.
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+1 on Y5. There are a few other apps in the market that claim to do the same thing, but I think Y5 is by far the easiest to set up and works really well. Nice little utility so you don't have to keep remembering to turn off the wifi manually when you are out of range.
Now if I could just find a app that does the same for my bluetooth when it is near my car....but that I think is much harder to do without it actually polling.
I don't really know if this is peculiar to Glorious Overload (which I've been running for a week or so) or is maybe a kernel problem on the Sidekick 4G.
I want my wifi to stay connected when the screen turns off. I've tried setting the wifi sleep policy to both "never" and "never when plugged in" with limited success. Seems to sometimes stay on and sometimes not. When it gets into the "sometimes not" state, the only cure I have found is rebooting the phone. Other than that, I haven't yet caught a pattern to it.
Anyone have any info or suggestions?
(For those wondering, I want wifi to stay on so that I can use the quite nice "AutoAir" app to turn off my 3G/4G data connection [to save battery] when I'm connected over wifi. And I want that because I'm trying to use "Groove IP" to do all my calls as VoIP, which is somewhat better over wifi when it's available.)
(For those who don't know how to set the wifi sleep policy, try Settings > Wireless and network > Wi-Fi settings. Then hit the menu button and select "Advanced".)
Well, I checked my advanced settings, and mines was on never. I know it's woring because I download a lot of crap, esp via torrent clients. And once I have wifi on, it doesn't use 4g anymore. When I turn it off, 4g comes back. Mind you, I don't use and switcher apps or anything of that matter.
Quite odd that you're having a problem, are you stock GO2?
Sent from my Sidekick 4G running PDT's Glorious Overdose.
Yes, stock GO2.
For me, the behavior is intermittent. Sometimes seems to stay on, but sometimes seems to "forget".
There seem to be a zillion "fix your wifi" or "keep your wifi on" apps in the market, so I am trying a few of those now. (Slow going due to the intermittent nature of the problem I'm trying to solve.)
I noticed at the end of your post that u want to turn off your data and keep your wifi on to save battery, but with our device having wifi on uses more power than data. Mainly because our data and our cell signal are on the same radio, so by turning off data you really are doing nothing, because your cell service is still using the radio, but now that you've turned on wifi you now have the cell/data radio on and your wifi radio on. Really the fact that our cell and data are in the same radio is great because it really cuts down on battery use. So there you go. Learn something new everyday. please thanks this post if you didn't know this or if it helped you.
Sent from my Kindle Fire using XDA
You're right ... I didn't know that.
The other reason I want to keep the wifi on (apart from my faulty reasoning about battery life) is that VoIP is generally better over wifi. It's easy to get that arranged for outgoing calls, but the phone is generally napping for incoming calls.
I may have to rethink my whole strategy for this.
Is anyone elses S7 constantly using their cell radio even while on a strong WiFi network? I'm thinking that might be contributing to my poor battery life so far.
Hmm? Do you have the hybrid download option on? The option that uses wifi and cell tower at the same time for faster downloads? Maybe it doesn't make a difference, but maybe it does?
AthlonII240 said:
Is anyone elses S7 constantly using their cell radio even while on a strong WiFi network? I'm thinking that might be contributing to my poor battery life so far.
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You may be onto something. I use wifi calling while at work since our metal building seems to block cell service. On my S5 if wifi calling was on the cellular sygnal indicator was always grayed out. On my S7 it actually isn't greyed out and shows signal strength.
And I don't use download booster.
Try turning off VoLTE and wifi calling.
scott14719 said:
Hmm? Do you have the hybrid download option on? The option that uses wifi and cell tower at the same time for faster downloads? Maybe it doesn't make a difference, but maybe it does?
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Nope, did not have the "Download booster" on.
I did the following things, and they seemed to make no difference to my situation: Enabled/disabled "Download booster", disabled VoLTE, remove/re-add my WiFi profile, disable/re-enable WiFI Calling, disable/re-enable IPSec passthrough on my router(this is what T-Mobile uses for WiFi Calling).
However, I did do another step after this that has seemed to make a difference:
1. Settings
2. "Backup and reset"
3. "Reset settings" NOT FACTORY DATA RESET.
4. Click "RESET SETTINGS".
After that my issue has gone away, and my battery life seems to have improved a fair bit. The nice thing about the above manner of resetting is it just resets network settings, profile settings and app permissions, it doesn't delete apps or personal data. I suspect that my issue was caused by an app permission gone awry as this has fixed my particular issue.
Hopefully this can help someone else.
Hi,
Just wanted to ask: Is there a significant difference in battery usage with the data on while on WiFi? I had read somewhere that it's best to turn off data when on wifi so that the radio doesn't keep looking for 4g signals unnecessarily thus saving battery. Has anyone tested this? But, generally, I wanted if this theory is just a hoax or if there's some meat to it!
Hoax. WiFi uses more energy than data
My phone doesn't use LTE/mobile data when WiFi is working. When I turn WiFi off, it takes a second to reconnect to mobile data network and show the icon up top. I assume it's not working in conjunction, I also believe it won't affect battery life one way or another.
If you have a very poor signal, it will most likely be searching. However turning off data won't stop this (at least I don't think it will)
steadly2004 said:
My phone doesn't use LTE/mobile data when WiFi is working. When I turn WiFi off, it takes a second to reconnect to mobile data network and show the icon up top. I assume it's not working in conjunction, I also believe it won't affect battery life one way or another.
If you have a very poor signal, it will most likely be searching. However turning off data won't stop this (at least I don't think it will)
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Cool thanks..
I don't know if turning data off will result in battery savings but I have been using Tasker to automatically turn my data off when on WiFi for the longest time now.