On the E4GT forum the accepted practice is to set the Wifi Sleep Policy to Never, as in Wifi is always connected. The idea being that having the phone searching for/communicating with towers constantly would drain you battery more than having a solid Wifi connection (in your home anyway. When traveling, turn it off). I've now seen the opposite recommended here on the GS3 forums several times. Thus, my question is: which option is best for battery life? If letting Wifi sleep when the screen is off is better, why is it different for this phone versus the E4GT? Or are they just wrong over there?
on my DX there used to be a problem with the WIFI going to sleep, and not connecting, so the answer was to put it to never. I'm using Juice Defender and it routinely shuts off my connection until i turn my screen on. saves battery and works mostly flawlessly. As with anything, drops occur, but most of the time this works.
Still curious, if anyone has some info
I was also wondering about this, I am running the unlocked cm10 and I set the policy to never to try it, but the setting isn't holding, so I am wondering if it really makes a difference
Related
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.
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
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
Hey guys just a quick question. I already get phenomenal idle drain. I don't drop a single percent overnight in an 8 hr period. Couldn't be happier. I also have no wakelock issues However I want to help battery life while not idle.
So I created a tasker profile that enables data when only in apps that need it like Tapatalk. Then when I exit that app (screen still on) or turn the screen off data shuts off.
My question is if I'm going more harm then good with the constant data toggling. I know it's probably subjective to how much I use these data apps so data gets toggled. Is there a way to test this myself?
Not worth your effort. Don't try to micromanage too much.
thats right, enjoy your device instead.
OK thanks guys
Sandman-007 said:
Hey guys just a quick question. I already get phenomenal idle drain. I don't drop a single percent overnight in an 8 hr period. Couldn't be happier. I also have no wakelock issues However I want to help battery life while not idle.
So I created a tasker profile that enables data when only in apps that need it like Tapatalk. Then when I exit that app (screen still on) or turn the screen off data shuts off.
My question is if I'm going more harm then good with the constant data toggling. I know it's probably subjective to how much I use these data apps so data gets toggled. Is there a way to test this myself?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do you get this?
I would just say to one day use your data toggle, and don't the next day if you're curious. I'm usually curious about these things too. I set my Tasker up so it switches to 3G when I'm connected to my work's wifi. My whole work's area has very strong 3G and very weak LTE so I have bad signal because the phone keeps trying to connect to the LTE network. However, my work's wifi is also not very stable and it keeps disconnected which leads my phone to constantly toggle between 3G and LTE. I'm not sure if this affects battery drain but it felt a bit like a drain. I just ended up manually toggling. But I'm usually curious which what drains the battery more. Since your data would be off when the screen is off and if you're not using wifi you should get very good standby time.
How is everyone's battery life after the MM update? Improved, same or worse?
Also, Doze is not working at all for me. I left my phone unplugged over night for 6 hours and lost 30-35% of my battery. That is far worse than it was on Lollipop. I did a factory reset after the update too, as I always do. WiFi scanning is off. I noticed my Android OS usage was really high when I woke up too. See attached image.
No problems for me.
Mine is really good. When idle, I'm only losing about 25 mAh.. I'm also using Greenify non root method.
Sent from my SM-G920V using XDA-Developers mobile app
Mines $hit! Even worse than before. I did a factory reset after update to mm. 5% drain per ~10min
Lost ~2% overnight.
Yeah. I lost 5% since 7AM this morning. That was almost 5 hours ago.
I just posted this on another thread. This may help.
1) Under Wi-Fi advanced settings, change sleep policy to "Charge Only"
2) Go to Locations -> Improve Accuracy. Make sure Wi-Fi scanning is off. This setting was moved here under MM
3) Charge the phone to 100%, let it run to 0. DO NOT CHARGE IT! It must power itself off. Charge it back up.
This had a dramatic result on my battery.
Please stop spreading false information.
jasong127 said:
My batter life was horrible after the upgrade. Here's what I did to fix it.
1) Wifi sleep policy - Changed that to "While Charging" (big difference noticed after that)
2) Fully charged phone then let it run down to 0 (must let it power itself off)
3) Wifi Scanning has been moved under Location setting. Go to Location -> Improve accuracy, make sure Wi-Fi scanning is off.
Batter life is awesome now.
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1: Apps/sync will use mobile data as priority if this is done while waiting to connect to wifi. In turn, using even more battery if an app/sync wakes the phone switching between networks.
2: This is damaging to Li batteries. To extend the life of your battery, it is better to keep it topped above 80% and cool(not very common in real world applications). These aren't Ni batteries, long gone are the days of "memory discharging".
If you don't need notifications at night, use airplane mode. I miss Xposed, Autotasker, and Amplify(formerly Bounce)... Greenify is a good alt atm
Note: Sometimes even Play service updates will introduce bugs and or "retarded" policies that will destroy the battery, especially the "Now" systems. It can happen at the most random times as well and not at all most. Every now and then the fat man will get stuck in the tube.
False information? Kind of an ass thing to say, but suit yourself. Just telling folks what I did to FIX this issue as well as what has been posted on many other sites.
Some people find it easier to criticize those that try to help than offering solutions of their own.
jasong127 said:
I just posted this on another thread. This may help.
1) Under Wi-Fi advanced settings, change sleep policy to "Charge Only"
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Steamer86 said:
Please stop spreading false information.
1: Apps/sync will use mobile data as priority if this is done while waiting to connect to wifi. In turn, using even more battery if an app/sync wakes the phone switching between networks.
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I'm getting confused. Can someone please tell me what each of the three settings below from the S6 on Marshmallow actually does in terms of radio(s) used and sleep states? The wording of this setting is different in different builds of Android, and I'd like to know what each setting does specifically for the S6 on Marshmallow.
Always (Increases battery consumption)
While charging
Never (Increases data usage)
Here's the Android documentation if that helps.
WIFI_SLEEP_POLICY
The policy for deciding when Wi-Fi should go to sleep (which will in turn switch to using the mobile data as an Internet connection).
WIFI_SLEEP_POLICY_DEFAULT
Value for WIFI_SLEEP_POLICY to use the default Wi-Fi sleep policy, which is to sleep shortly after the turning off according to the STAY_ON_WHILE_PLUGGED_IN setting.
WIFI_SLEEP_POLICY_NEVER
Value for WIFI_SLEEP_POLICY to never go to sleep.
WIFI_SLEEP_POLICY_NEVER_WHILE_PLUGGED
Value for WIFI_SLEEP_POLICY to use the default policy when the device is on battery, and never go to sleep when the device is plugged in.
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source official Android developer documentation
jasong127 said:
False information? Kind of an ass thing to say, but suit yourself. Just telling folks what I did to FIX this issue as well as what has been posted on many other sites.
Some people find it easier to criticize those that try to help than offering solutions of their own.
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Click to collapse
I'm not using any criticism nor is it an ass thing to say, just fact.The cellular radios uses more battery than wifi and even more when switching networks. A full discharge damages Li batteries. On a clean phone wifi always on WILL save some juice. At night, airplane mode will greatly reduce drain if you don't mind having no connection.
I'm happy it worked for you, however, bad information. Some simple research will tell you that. I see a 1 to 3 percent night drain on a clean phone with wifi always on, no scan, mobile data off. Hell, thats even with google pinging my old address from router on maps timeline.
@RylanM I know it says more consumption, but research and decide for yourself.