use wifi or not? - Thunderbolt General

From a battery perspective, should I use wifi? Most of the time i'm at home or at work where I have wifi. I also have good lte coverage at both. Speed aside, will I save battery by not using wifi or not?

You'll definitely save battery by using wifi when you can connect. I love the speeds over lte, but it is definitely a hog...

i also had boost of battery using WIFI
Using unlimited data plan makes me to consider using 4g, but I found that Wifi consumes much less battery.

Use wifi. The battery savings are huge.

yes i cant stress enough, wifi saves enormous amounts of battery so use it when ever possible. the difference is like night and day.

Compared to 3G
I've been leaving my wifi off since I have unlimited data and the 3G is pretty fast in my area, no 4G yet.
I've had pretty good battery life lately using only 3G, I'll have to do a few tests and see which one and I'm a fairly heavy user I'm approaching 4GB this month and none of that is tethering

3G or Wifi
Tested watching a streaming video of 22 mins
on 3G I lost 13%
on wifi I lost 8%
Wifi wins, of course standby is probably different, if 3G vs wifi loses this badly I'd have to imagine LTE vs Wifi is a slaughter battery wise

Actually I found something interesting...
For some reason, even when I am home using Wifi, the battery drains faster than I thought. Where I live is like a strange signal spot. If I turn off my WiFi I can see my TBolt constantly switching between LTE and 3G, sometimes it stucks on 1xRTT for a while then goes right back to switching between connections. If I am at work (downtown LA) where the LTE is pretty well covered, I still use WiFi at the office, the battery BARELY drain at ALL.
My theory is that even when WiFi is active, the phone somehow STILL does the LTE/EvDO switching on the background does draining the battery.
If somehow the devs or VZW can tell the phone to STICK to EvDO/1xRTT instead of going back and forth with the LTE while WiFi data is on, it'll solve the problem.
Also just FYI, I have the latest radio and BMAF 1.5 remixed.

SteveDusa said:
Actually I found something interesting...
For some reason, even when I am home using Wifi, the battery drains faster than I thought. Where I live is like a strange signal spot. If I turn off my WiFi I can see my TBolt constantly switching between LTE and 3G, sometimes it stucks on 1xRTT for a while then goes right back to switching between connections. If I am at work (downtown LA) where the LTE is pretty well covered, I still use WiFi at the office, the battery BARELY drain at ALL.
My theory is that even when WiFi is active, the phone somehow STILL does the LTE/EvDO switching on the background does draining the battery.
If somehow the devs or VZW can tell the phone to STICK to EvDO/1xRTT instead of going back and forth with the LTE while WiFi data is on, it'll solve the problem.
Also just FYI, I have the latest radio and BMAF 1.5 remixed.
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pretty much correct. at least on the gsm side, when i connect to wifi at home, i can no longer see if the phone is on 3G or EDGE. but it definitely switches back and forth to those networks, while staying on wifi, you just dont see the icon switching, but its definitely happening. i dont see why cdma and 1x would be any different.

if this is the case then why don't you just turn data off when you are on wifi.
^_^_^'s tbolt

EEdaesung said:
if this is the case then why don't you just turn data off when you are on wifi.
^_^_^'s tbolt
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You are absolutly right! How come I never thought of that. Will do that when I get home tonight.
Thanks for the tip!
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

Better yet get juice defender and automate it . Its very good app. Right now it says I'm almost adding fifty percent on to my battery.

I seem to be bucking the trend here, but LTE is working better for me than wifi. I usually have a good signal, so that's part of it.
The other part is that my wifi may be eating more juice than normal because the TB and my router may not be playing nice together. Ever since I added the TB to the network, I've had to reboot the router every coupla days. Before the TB, it was solid weeks on end.

Has anyone who is still having trouble on with batter on wifi set their wifi sleep policy to "Never" sleep? Mine is set to this and if I am home most of the day I will lose very little battery through out the day.
I believe by default the wifi is set to turn off after a period of time or when the screen is off so during this time I believe you are actually reverting back to using the vzw network. To turn wifi to always on go to settings>wireless>wifi settings>hit menu>advanced. The sleep policy is at the top, change sleep policy to never. This my reduce battery while not connected to wifi so I always use the power control widget to turn my wifi off completely while I am away from the house.

shovelheadhd said:
Has anyone who is still having trouble on with batter on wifi set their wifi sleep policy to "Never" sleep? Mine is set to this and if I am home most of the day I will lose very little battery through out the day.
I believe by default the wifi is set to turn off after a period of time or when the screen is off so during this time I believe you are actually reverting back to using the vzw network. To turn wifi to always on go to settings>wireless>wifi settings>hit menu>advanced. The sleep policy is at the top, change sleep policy to never. This my reduce battery while not connected to wifi so I always use the power control widget to turn my wifi off completely while I am away from the house.
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Oh yeah this is very important, set wifi sleep policy to never greatly increases battery life. Otherwise it switches back to 3g when screen goes off and drains way more battery. This is very important to set this otherwise you wont see the increase.

Is strongly recommend switching to cdma only if yore gonna use WiFi and plan on saving your battery. Otherwise what's the point. I personally don't even bother using WiFi just use LTE only mode. I'm getting better speeds than most WiFi connections using my LTE.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

Related

Battery life tweak

I was lurking over at the sprint hero board and came across an interesting thread. People are noticing an increase in battery life when the set the wifi settings for sleep to Never.
Seems like what is happening, as soon as the phone blanks out, WIFI is turned of and the phone is switched to EVDO mode. which drains battery. If your in a bad coverage area your battery drains even faster.
Some people are talking about a performance increase as well, but I think what they are seeing is the phone not having to cycle back to wifi everytime they touch the phone.
Treefallingquietly said:
I was lurking over at the sprint hero board and came across an interesting thread. People are noticing an increase in battery life when the set the wifi settings for sleep to Never.
Seems like what is happening, as soon as the phone blanks out, WIFI is turned of and the phone is switched to EVDO mode. which drains battery. If your in a bad coverage area your battery drains even faster.
Some people are talking about a performance increase as well, but I think what they are seeing is the phone not having to cycle back to wifi everytime they touch the phone.
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Interesting, but is this for those who always have wifi enabled (I never use it)? I'll try anything to get more from my battery since I can barely squeeze out about a day (18 hours) from my phone even with the sms workaround implemented.
I'm looking in the wifi settings and don't see any options for "wifi sleep".
katmandu421 said:
Interesting, but is this for those who always have wifi enabled (I never use it)? I'll try anything to get more from my battery since I can barely squeeze out about a day (18 hours) from my phone even with the sms workaround implemented.
I'm looking in the wifi settings and don't see any options for "wifi sleep".
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Here is the link: http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/24324?tstart=0
Basically, when you are in an area that has spotty coverage, your battery will drain quicker because its always roaming and trying for service. I get this in the Texas Hill country. So if you have wifi and are in a bad location, whenever your wifi sleeps, it goes back to EV. I think just the nature of this connection is hard on the battery. hence using Wifi as much as possible.
Another option is to use APNdroid or something like it to disable the EVDO when you're not using it. Push notifications don't always come through that way or can be slow coming, but if you know your phone is just going to sit there you can conserve a lot of power this way. Turning off GPS, WiFi and EVDO I was able to squeeze out almost 3 days of usage when I was using the phone sparingly. If you're enabling those connections only when you need them, making it through the day should be no problem if you're not constantly using the device.

Wifi time-out OFF by default?

So, it seems the default policy for wifi on this device is never to disconnect itself to save power. The Vibrant defaulted to whenever the screen was off. That makes the default wifi policy between these two devices vastly different. In fact, there isn't even an option on this phone to disconnect from wifi when the screen is shut down. I wonder how this will affect battery life. I may think twice about enabling wifi.
The first thing I did after connecting it to my wifi was go to the wifi advanced settings and set the sleep policy to never. I'm glad it was already off by default. It shows that someone at HTC paid attention to that small detail and how it affected battery life. It greatly helps your battery life in my experience (with the Vibrant), since it's not constantly connecting and disconnecting from wifi which apparently uses more power.
Aspeds2989 said:
The first thing I did after connecting it to my wifi was go to the wifi advanced settings and set the sleep policy to never. I'm glad it was already off by default. It shows that someone at HTC paid attention to that small detail and how it affected battery life. It greatly helps your battery life in my experience (with the Vibrant), since it's not constantly connecting and disconnecting from wifi which apparently uses more power.
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Agree 100%.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
Aspeds2989 said:
The first thing I did after connecting it to my wifi was go to the wifi advanced settings and set the sleep policy to never. I'm glad it was already off by default. It shows that someone at HTC paid attention to that small detail and how it affected battery life. It greatly helps your battery life in my experience (with the Vibrant), since it's not constantly connecting and disconnecting from wifi which apparently uses more power.
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Really? How would that *improve* battery life? I would have it to *detract* from battery life. If I'm at home basking in my wireless network, why would I rather have the connection permanent than to have it disconnected when the screen shuts off as it does by default with the Vibrant? If what you say is true, then setting the timeout from the 15 minutes timeout, as I have it now, to full time connection (never timeouts), will actually save on battery? To me, that flies in the face of reason, but then again, stranger things I've come across.
Just hoping for a reply to the above, and perhaps someone can explain why having wifi never time-out even when the screen is off can lead to better battery life?
think about it. having to connect and reconnect everytime you turn on your screen is bound to eat up. if your screen is off its not sucking in massive amounts of data so the battery drain is at a min
Lockeskidney said:
think about it. having to connect and reconnect everytime you turn on your screen is bound to eat up. if your screen is off its not sucking in massive amounts of data so the battery drain is at a min
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Well, it's certainly not intuitive, and I am thinking about it, hence the post. In order to maintain an active wifi connection, there has to be continual pinging back and forth even with no active data connections from the device. Now, we all know that there *is* a lot of data being exchanged when the screen is off - whether it be syncing accounts, retrieving news items, emails, etc. This would all be taking place over a wifi connection by default. It is also my understanding that using your wifi radio consumes more power than your UMTS radio does. However, I'm not entirely sure of that last point.
Isn't it far more intuitive to believe (whether factual or not) that having the wifi radio powered on unnecessarily while in your pocket would consume more power than having it turn off? Even the seasoned users over in the Vibrant forums all recommend setting the wifi to turn off when the screen shuts off, which is a setting not available on the MT4G.
I'd like to believe that how HTC sets the default wifi behavior conserves power, but it sort of flies in the face of reason. I'm also of the belief that the device is set by default the way it is so that callers who use Wifi Calling can always be reached while at home on their wifi network. But, having such a wifi connection setting is actually eating up your battery life if you don't need wifi calling.
Wifi used less power that edge/g3/4g. Having it constantly on wifi with improve your battery life just because when wifi is enabled it shuts off cellular data.
option94 said:
Wifi used less power that edge/g3/4g. Having it constantly on wifi with improve your battery life just because when wifi is enabled it shuts off cellular data.
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Ah, OK, well there you have it. Someone ought to tell those folks over the in the Vibrant forums then. Thanks...
floepie said:
Ah, OK, well there you have it. Someone ought to tell those folks over the in the Vibrant forums then. Thanks...
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I have. I have a vibrant. Ordered the mytouch last night.
Also, can't have WiFi sleeping... otherwise WiFi calling won't work...
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Battery life is bad because of the radio

I'm on the EagleBlood Rom and currently in Singapore. Becsause I'm not using T-Mobiles expensive service and WLAN is here everywhere I have used the phone with WLAN + GPS only (Airplane mode + manual turned on WLAN + GPS). I used Locus Pro extensivly to navigate through the city and record my track. Battery after first day 8:00AM til 9:00PM was 79%. Second day is 55%.
Therefore the Cell Standby is really the issue here I would asume. But hack what do I have a cell phone for if I can't turn on the radio???
Battery really sucks otherwise. When I go to work at 07:30am and come home at 4:30PM I can put the phone on the charger, even though I barly used it.
I'm in the states, this phone lasts from about 7:30 AM until 8:00 PM with no problem, regular use, 4G all day. I disabled the Wifi which helped a lot.
Wifi uses less battery due to not having to poll the network to renew the connection. Wifi calling uses even less battery because now you have no connection to the network and it can keep a static connection to the wifi network. No need to renew that connection so it just sits there and does nothing.
I've tested and confirmed this on more than one phone.
And of course the radio is using battery. It's second only to the display in battery use. Like you said, what good is a cell phone without having the radio enabled?
iamlilysdad said:
Wifi uses less battery due to not having to poll the network to renew the connection. Wifi calling uses even less battery because now you have no connection to the network and it can keep a static connection to the wifi network. No need to renew that connection so it just sits there and does nothing.
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This all true. Display and 3G/4G radio are the killers.
Unless you have wifi on and aren't connected to a network. Then your phone is polling for wifi connections in addition to 4G
Yay! Yet another battery thread that I get to comment on!
i use wifi/wifi-calling over 95% of the time and my battery rocks! The moment I turn it off... bam.... I get crappy life on a batter. the difference is from around 35hr and drops to around 20. Then if i had moderate to heavy use on it, I'm sure I'd be getting the 8hrs everyone is complaining about.
I like cheese
hire4blood said:
I'm on the EagleBlood Rom and currently in Singapore. Becsause I'm not using T-Mobiles expensive service and WLAN is here everywhere I have used the phone with WLAN + GPS only (Airplane mode + manual turned on WLAN + GPS). I used Locus Pro extensivly to navigate through the city and record my track. Battery after first day 8:00AM til 9:00PM was 79%. Second day is 55%.
Therefore the Cell Standby is really the issue here I would asume. But hack what do I have a cell phone for if I can't turn on the radio???
Battery really sucks otherwise. When I go to work at 07:30am and come home at 4:30PM I can put the phone on the charger, even though I barly used it.
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I'm going to Hong Kong this Sunday, then will be in Singapore by the end of next Wednesday. I'm thinking to buy a local sim and use 2g only with manual WLAN, GPS off.
Agreed. I'm running CM7 #9. Took the phone off the charger at 8am. Checked my push exchange, twitter, and facebook updates. Went into work where we have no service. I have WiFi turned on for data.
I still have the cellular radio on, btw. At 3pm I have 88%.
CM7 has a WiFi bug which the WiFi won't stay on (goes to sleep with the screen off). But still pretty good.
it has been proved that 4g kills battery faster then 3g and 2g. http://blog.lifehacker.com/5741627/why-you-might-want-to-wait-for-a-4g-phone until there is a way for 4g radios to manage data more efficiently 4g is gonna kill you battery.
I'm using Eagle Blood 1.03 and my battery life is awesome right now. I think at this point, I could do a couple days before running out. I am just speculating right now, but I will try to leave off the charger tonight to see what I can get out of it.
cervantesjc said:
it has been proved that 4g kills battery faster then 3g and 2g. http://blog.lifehacker.com/5741627/why-you-might-want-to-wait-for-a-4g-phone until there is a way for 4g radios to manage data more efficiently 4g is gonna kill you battery.
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If you saying only 4G I cannot share the expirience with you. I even turned of data completly, while I was still in the US and still got bad battery life with ONLY the radio turned on (WLAN + Data + GPS turned off)
jdaclutch said:
I'm going to Hong Kong this Sunday, then will be in Singapore by the end of next Wednesday. I'm thinking to buy a local sim and use 2g only with manual WLAN, GPS off.
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Hong Kong Airport has free WLAN. Singapore has free wirless LAN called [email protected] through the whole downtown area. But there is a catch you have to have a Singapore Mobile number to register. They will send you the UserID and Password via text message. Lucky me I have a friend here sharing his user ID with me ... Therefore no need for the Radio to be turned on at all. And like I said the battery now last forever...
hire4blood said:
If you saying only 4G I cannot share the expirience with you. I even turned of data completly, while I was still in the US and still got bad battery life with ONLY the radio turned on (WLAN + Data + GPS turned off)
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Ok let me see if i understand (not trying to be a **** here), if all of the phone functions are turned off, what were you doing?, playing games?, watching videos?, i don't know, because to me it sounds like you phone was idle.
One more example that 4g kills battery is the thunderbolt, if you think that the G2x kills battery you should use that phone and comeback to the G2x, even HTC is selling bigger batteries for thunderbolt because customers are *****ing about the battery life.
You should try and use 2g only and see if this helps you battery life a little, i guess im just lucky, i have no screen bleed, no reboots and battery life for me is awesome, whit and without 4g.
cervantesjc said:
Ok let me see if i understand (not trying to be a **** here), if all of the phone functions are turned off, what were you doing?, playing games?, watching videos?, i don't know, because to me it sounds like you phone was idle.
One more example that 4g kills battery is the thunderbolt, if you think that the G2x kills battery you should use that phone and comeback to the G2x, even HTC is selling bigger batteries for thunderbolt because customers are *****ing about the battery life.
You should try and use 2g only and see if this helps you battery life a little, i guess im just lucky, i have no screen bleed, no reboots and battery life for me is awesome, whit and without 4g.
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Dude all the functions are turned on except the radio. I use the phone in airplane mode with WLAN + GPS enabled. I use GPS apps to track my way to Singapore. In downtown they have free WLAN everywhere. Phone last for 2 days this way, but makes no sence of course having a phone without a radio...
Oh and I use Sipdroid with Sipgate to receive and do free phone calls
cervantesjc said:
it has been proved that 4g kills battery faster then 3g and 2g. http://blog.lifehacker.com/5741627/why-you-might-want-to-wait-for-a-4g-phone until there is a way for 4g radios to manage data more efficiently 4g is gonna kill you battery.
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Just making sure here, but you know that T-Mobile's 4G is still using the same existing 3G connections, thus not requiring it to run on a different band, right? HSPA/HSPA+ connections share the same bands, and thus the "4G" connection is running through the same radio without affecting battery life. WiMAX and LTE operate differently and both run seperate from the EVDO that Verizon and Sprint use for their 3G.
That being said, a radio, regardless, will always drain the battery faster than anything, which is why Wifi Calling is so effective in keeping high battery life.
The other HSPA+ enabled phones on T-Mobile are getting fantastic battery life, as long as you aren't constantly using the displays.
I am leaning to believe that's a major reason why everyone's phones are dying so fast. They've got a new toy so they're always playing with it and killing it quickly. I've done that with every new phone I've gotten. My G1, the Cliq, the myTouch Slide, and now this. Give it a few days and when you're not turning the screen on every five seconds to just flick around the menus, and you'll see your life improve.
Yesterday, for example, I ran my phone off of charge from 11 AM EST until 6 AM EST (6 AM, Monday Morning). This was with moderate use.
Its not just that we're playing with our new toys. This phone most definitely drains battery like its going out of style. I had to drive 90 minutes to the client I was coming to work with today. I unplugged my phone when I left my hotel room (and it was at 100%) and when I got to the office, 2hours and 15 minutes later, having never turned my phone on since I was driving the whole time, my phone was at 82%. That's really bad for a phone idling. I think there's a radio bug or its polling too often because if I let JuiceDefender work, then in the same period of time this evening I was at 94% battery. That's a big difference.
hire4blood said:
Hong Kong Airport has free WLAN. Singapore has free wirless LAN called [email protected] through the whole downtown area. But there is a catch you have to have a Singapore Mobile number to register. They will send you the UserID and Password via text message. Lucky me I have a friend here sharing his user ID with me ... Therefore no need for the Radio to be turned on at all. And like I said the battery now last forever...
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I know HK airport has free WLAN, but places like starbucks/Mcd only offer 30 mins- 2 hours of free WLAN a day.I will be in HK for a month(after I got back from Singapore), so I might need to purchase a pre-paid internet plan..I will be in Singapore for a week, so hopefully they will have unlimited free WLAN there...
IT'S NOT 4G THAT'S KILLING BATTERY. As was stated above it uses the existing 3G network for faster data speeds. Phones like the Thunderbolt and EVO (and anything else that connects to WIMAX or LTE) need a completely separate radio (and thus controller) to connect to 4G.
HSPA+ is just really fast 3G so the existing SOC's that have support on-die for T-Mobile 3G frequencies just have to have a slightly updated version of the hardware (to support either class 10 or class 14 HSPA+).
This would be a perfect example as to why T-Mobile and AT&T shouldn't be able to market HSPA+ as 4G. It confuses people and makes them think that battery life will suck because of it like it does on Sprint and Verizon. When SOC's come out that have on die support for LTE and WIMAX (I think I heard 2012) then battery life for those phones won't suck anymore.
xenoletum said:
Just making sure here, but you know that T-Mobile's 4G is still using the same existing 3G connections, thus not requiring it to run on a different band, right? HSPA/HSPA+ connections share the same bands, and thus the "4G" connection is running through the same radio without affecting battery life. WiMAX and LTE operate differently and both run seperate from the EVDO that Verizon and Sprint use for their 3G.
That being said, a radio, regardless, will always drain the battery faster than anything, which is why Wifi Calling is so effective in keeping high battery life.
The other HSPA+ enabled phones on T-Mobile are getting fantastic battery life, as long as you aren't constantly using the displays.
I am leaning to believe that's a major reason why everyone's phones are dying so fast. They've got a new toy so they're always playing with it and killing it quickly. I've done that with every new phone I've gotten. My G1, the Cliq, the myTouch Slide, and now this. Give it a few days and when you're not turning the screen on every five seconds to just flick around the menus, and you'll see your life improve.
Yesterday, for example, I ran my phone off of charge from 11 AM EST until 6 AM EST (6 AM, Monday Morning). This was with moderate use.
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The antena-radio, is using more battery, just because is handling data at a higher rate.
Just like I said before, until there is a way or update to the radio to handle data more efficiently, 4g radio is gonna keep draining battery.
And yes hspa+ and wimax are similar yet incompatible technologies, but the way they handle data take a big chunk out of you battery.
And is a fact that radio is draining most of the battery, and until we get a radio update, battery is gonna drain fast.
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Wifi drains more battery than mobile network?

Title says it all.
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Sure does not.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
Not even comparable... data takes up tons of battery
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If it's constantly in a loop of trying, unsuccessfully, to connect to a wireless network, I could see it increasing obviously, but in a normal connected state, as the others say, no way as much as mobile.
alright awesome ill keep using wifi
Scott_S said:
If it's constantly in a loop of trying, unsuccessfully, to connect to a wireless network, I could see it increasing obviously, but in a normal connected state, as the others say, no way as much as mobile.
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Scott is right. If you don't have wifi connected it will constantly search for it causing battery drain. If you leave and don't plan on being on wifi I would shut it off so that your phone isn't constantly searching for a network. There are some battery settings in the wifi menu that can help with that though just not very much.
P.S. oops edited sorry Scott lol
Carlrobling said:
...Mud is right...
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I'll take that as a complement.
I disagree, every phone i have seen uses significantly more battery having wifi turned on, I definately notice it on mine, and im talking about being connected to a wifi the entire time. My battery life with wifi on has always been **** compared to it being turned off, Iphone's all of them including 4, droid x, vibrant, captivate, inspire all the same result with wifi enabled.
Do a expierment charge phone to 100% before going to bed, lets say 10 pm to 6 am check battery power lvl, next night enable wifi, I am absolutely certain that u will have a much larger drain.
as for does it drain more while in use than 3g or 4g is another issue, some say it uses less than mobile network to transfer data because a mobile tower can be a few miles away while the router is no more than 200 feet. I personally think wifi still uses more battery, however i do use wifi when available to keep my data usage down. if u disabled 3g altogether then maybe. but with both on u are powering another radio.
jc2470 said:
I disagree, every phone i have seen uses significantly more battery having wifi turned on, I definately notice it on mine, and im talking about being connected to a wifi the entire time. My battery life with wifi on has always been **** compared to it being turned off, Iphone's all of them including 4, droid x, vibrant, captivate, inspire all the same result with wifi enabled.
Do a expierment charge phone to 100% before going to bed, lets say 10 pm to 6 am check battery power lvl, next night enable wifi, I am absolutely certain that u will have a much larger drain.
as for does it drain more while in use than 3g or 4g is another issue, some say it uses less than mobile network to transfer data because a mobile tower can be a few miles away while the router is no more than 200 feet. I personally think wifi still uses more battery, however i do use wifi when available to keep my data usage down. if u disabled 3g altogether then maybe. but with both on u are powering another radio.
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If you're saying that having WiFi on uses more battery than having WiFi off, which is how I read the first part of your post, I'd have to say you absolutely correct.
I think the question was whether WiFi used more battery than mobile data.
Mobile data uses more battery because its constantly trying to look for a better connection. E/3G/4G/ETC...
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App
according to alot of other post about this same issue say wifi uses more battery either way because your 3g /4g radio is still on when using wifi
Both right
If you have WiFi always on, constantly polling for it, when not connected, you will use >battery. If you are connected to WiFi, and thus not polling all the time, <battery usage.
I use Llama to disable my WiFi when I am out not using GPS. It knows I leave home or work based on location as tringulated by the cell towers, thus GPS doesn't have to be on. Your phone is always polling for towers anyway, even with data shut off, so this does not use any battery to speak of. There are a lot of towers here in my basic hood, so Llama seems to identified that I leave home from 100-1000 meters, depending which direction I go.
You will use less battery if you shut off WiFi polling while you have no chance to connect to Wifi, that is for sure!
I use Llama to shut off and on all sorts of stuff based on location or a set of conditions. It is all logic based: If condition A exists, perform B toggle. Works great for me in an area with lots of towers so location at home vs. work vs. out is determined rather easily and accurately in my experience.
Edit: other conditions available include days of the week, time of day, headset or bluetooth enabled, etc.
Wifi definitively uses less battery than 3g from all the tests I've done and common experiences around the forum. Its not even close.
Can you change the wifi interval in the build.prop file to have it search after a longer delay? I know on mine it is set for 15 (seconds)?
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WIFI vs LTE vs E

Hi,
I am trying to get a clear idea on the battery consumption of N5 on Wifi, LTE and E. If the purpose is to be battery friendly, which one (LTE, Wifi, Edge) should I left my phone on most of the time?
Thank you,
Well id say not WiFi! I use Wi-Fi at home and battery life is OK, it actually depends on how much you use it. I'm usually on my tablet at home and on the road my n5. Idk what E is but I'm thinking it's edge so that's probably better than LTE battery wise.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
stagius24 said:
Hi,
I am trying to get a clear idea on the battery consumption of N5 on Wifi, LTE and E. If the purpose is to be battery friendly, which one (LTE, Wifi, Edge) should I left my phone on most of the time?
Thank you,
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Wi-Fi is by far, the most battery friendly connection because the device only has to transmit and receive from a very short distance. Mobile data signals have to travel to the cell tower so more power is used the farther away you are from it. Less bars, more power used to communicate with the tower. LTE is best because you get that transmission completed very, very fast. HSDPA is good as well. Edge connection is very slow and makes the device hang waiting on the package to be sent and received, thus using more power in the long run. I usually set my phone to edge when I'm not going to be really using it.
Hope that helps.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
You certainly want to be using WiFi at home. I tried going data only for a couple days because it's unlimited and the battery drain especially while idle was much higher than using WiFi. This is with full signal 90% of the time.
WiFi is your friend for extended battery life. Mobile data - whether it's LTE, 3G/HSPA+ or good old Edge/2G will vary in power but it's pinging the towers for signal & cycling, so it will use more data - that is, all other things equal in terms of settings including the newer/est KitKat features.
Wifi whenever you can use it.
As far as cellular, as long as you have a decent signal, faster is always better (so the modem can download what it needs and turn back off). So use LTE if you're going to be using any data. Knock it down to edge (or off entirely) if you don't want to use data at all, or just for the occassional notification.
So Wifi is clearly the best. So when my phone is idle for a long time, let say at night, should I leave it under Edge or Wifi?
I am writing a tasker profile, so I just try to see which one is better in term of battery.
stagius24 said:
So Wifi is clearly the best. So when my phone is idle for a long time, let say at night, should I leave it under Edge or Wifi?
I am writing a tasker profile, so I just try to see which one is better in term of battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well you can always put it on airplane mode/turn off the mobile radio and switch on Wi-Fi after to just have Wi-Fi data. The catch is, you will not be receiving any calls or SMS/MMS while you have the mobile radio shut off... unless you're using a VOIP service.

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