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.
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.
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
why? couldnt it just use regular edge for phone calls and text?
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+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.
Hey guys-
Just upgraded to the FR008 Liberated and I dig everything about it but one thing. The battery life was immediately radically reduced from what I was getting with Eclair, and after turning off push and doing everything else to preserve battery life, it seems clear now that the problem is that it is searching for wifi hotspots everywhere.
The Y5 "Battery Saver" utility worked brilliantly on Eclair to turn off the wifi unless I was in a location where I used wifi, and then remembered if I manually turned on wifi in a certain location. I bet this tool increased my battery life by 50% on Eclair. But it totally doesn't work at all on Froyo.
Is there any way to get equivalent functionality from Froyo? Or does anyone know of an update to Y5 that will fix it with Froyo? It doesn't crash, it just doesn't do anything on Froyo.
I tried searching for this but it won't match "Y5" since the word is too short.
I've tried the various things and they all lag the hell out of my phone. And yup, the battery will drain terribly, no one believes it's a problem though, everyone seems to cite "check your apps" and don't realize that people aren't dumb and that the ROM drains battery.
the ROM doesn't drain the battery, but constantly searching for wifi hotspots does. Y5 solved that problem by turning on wifi only when you are in a location where you have configured it to use wifi.
As an example, when I go for a 2-hour bike ride with my phone, it drains the battery about 60% during that two hours, just because I happen to ride through neighborhoods where there are a ton of wifi networks (people's home networks). With Y5 working, it just stopped looking for wifi once I left my house and it only went down about 5-10% during that same 2 hour period.
I'm not sure about liberated, but on cm6 froyo if you go to settings> wireless & networks> wi-fi settings, and then press your menu button three is an advanced option. From in there you can set your wifi sleep policy to disconnect wifi while the screen is off. The phone shouldn't search for a wifi connection when the screen is off in this mode.
Sent from my cm6.1 Aria using XDA App
I suppose that'll help a little bit, but won't help much if the screen is on... like I am using the phone (say, in the car, especially while using navigation)...
Still would be nice if Y5 worked. It was a brilliantly simple solution. Not exactly in the mood to pay $10 for an app to do this but I might have to if it gets too frustrating.
check out Settings Profiles Lite - limited to one rule in the free version and should be able to do what you want.
T
looks like that MIGHT do it, but what a pain to set up for something so simple.
THe wifi sleep thing won't help me, mostly because when wifi goes off and on the network seems to be a bit flaky.
At the moment the only thing that'll work is manually disabling/enabling wifi. However, the widget seems to turn it off only to have it come back on.
sorry to bump, but wondering, does anyone else has a suggestion or a way to get Y5 to work in Froyo?
Sometimes my WiFi goes away, LTE kicks in for a second, and then WiFi comes right back. I don't know for certain, but it may only happen when the phone has been unused for a while, right after I first pick it up to do something. But I have the WiFi power saving option turned off, so that WiFi should stay on all the time. And I seem to recall it happening just at random sometimes, too, in the middle of browsing websites or social media apps. It'll say "no connection" and I'll look up and see LTE kick in, then WiFi come right back, then I'm all good. It's very annoying.
On top of the quick WiFi cycling issue, sometimes WiFi will just completely stop working. When I go into settings, it says it's disabled and I can't turn it back on. Going in and out of airplane mode fixes it. This only happens about once a week or so. The other issue is by far more annoying.
Anyone else experiencing either of these? I'm on Verizon with a black 128 GB stock, unrooted, if it makes a difference.
Thanks!
I personally haven't seen this on my VZW Pixel although I use it with T-Mobile service. These are as suggestions only, and it may or may not help, but you could try using any order below.
1) The setting to keep WiFi during sleep is on, right?
2) Have you tried to use your phone without sim card in it and see if WiFi is still acting strange?
3) I would also suggest to go to Settings>Google>Networking and see if you have WiFi assistant on or off. There is a setting under advanced as well.
4) Does it happen on all WiFi networks or when using on particular one? You could forget that network and then join again.
5) Alternatively you could "Network settings reset" under Settings>More>Network Settings Reset - after the reset, you may need to rejoin all the networks, pair Bluetooth devices and so on.