Hey there.
I use tasker to turn mobile data off as soon as I connect to my Wifi. When I go out of range, it turns mobile data back on.
That works great, the thing is I just read that the OS automatically does that for you, so... Am I being redundant? Is my tasker profile useless?
Thanks!
well, if you are on wifi, you are not connected to mobile data, youre connected to wifi so mobile data has no way of flowing in and out of your phone until you connect to a mobile connection.
rwed said:
Hey there.
I use tasker to turn mobile data off as soon as I connect to my Wifi. When I go out of range, it turns mobile data back on.
That works great, the thing is I just read that the OS automatically does that for you, so... Am I being redundant? Is my tasker profile useless?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Keep Wifi ON and Mobile Data ON, when your phone is close to a known wifi it will use the wifi instead of data and when you leave the wifi range it will go back to data by itself.
OK, I should have probably added that the purpose of this Tasker profile is to save battery life. As far as I know, not having to be connected to 3G or 4G would consume less power. Right?
EDIT: I mainly ask this for scenarios of really low data coverage. At work I barely have 1 bar, and the radio keeps switching from 2G to 3G and 4G. I'd assume that does indeed consume a lot of power even though I am connected to a Wifi network.
simms22 said:
well, if you are on wifi, you are not connected to mobile data, youre connected to wifi so mobile data has no way of flowing in and out of your phone until you connect to a mobile connection.
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Click to collapse
Bumchakalaka said:
Keep Wifi ON and Mobile Data ON, when your phone is close to a known wifi it will use the wifi instead of data and when you leave the wifi range it will go back to data by itself.
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Click to collapse
rwed said:
OK, I should have probably added that the purpose of this Tasker profile is to save battery life. As far as I know, not having to be connected to 3G or 4G would consume less power. Right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im on lte 100% of the time, and never ever use wifi, and i get 5-6h sot every battery cycle. really, youll get your best battery on the fastest, highest quality signal(data/phone) available for you to use, whichever type of signal it is.
rwed said:
OK, I should have probably added that the purpose of this Tasker profile is to save battery life. As far as I know, not having to be connected to 3G or 4G would consume less power. Right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well if you have Wifi toggled ON and DATA toggled ON too, the wifi would put the data on stand-by mode and when data come in it would put the wifi on stand-by(and you can also go to wifi settings>advanced>wifi optimization[helps with power saving] while wifi is on and running).
Sorry guys, I see I edited my post while you both were replying. See:
EDIT: I mainly ask this for scenarios of really low data coverage. At work I barely have 1 bar, and the radio keeps switching from 2G to 3G and 4G. I'd assume that does indeed consume a lot of power even though I am connected to a Wifi network.
So my point being, data might be put into stand by mode, but my guess is that the phone constantly switching radio modes and having to deal with low signals might consume more power than with data off. Don't you think?
Thanks!
simms22 said:
im on lte 100% of the time, and never ever use wifi, and i get 5-6h sot every battery cycle. really, youll get your best battery on the fastest, highest quality signal(data/phone) available for you to use, whichever type of signal it is.
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Click to collapse
Bumchakalaka said:
Well if you have Wifi toggled ON and DATA toggled ON too, the wifi would put the data on stand-by mode and when data come in it would put the wifi on stand-by(and you can also go to wifi settings>advanced>wifi optimization[helps with power saving] while wifi is on and running).
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Click to collapse
rwed said:
Sorry guys, I see I edited my post while you both were replying. See:
EDIT: I mainly ask this for scenarios of really low data coverage. At work I barely have 1 bar, and the radio keeps switching from 2G to 3G and 4G. I'd assume that does indeed consume a lot of power even though I am connected to a Wifi network.
So my point being, data might be put into stand by mode, but my guess is that the phone constantly switching radio modes and having to deal with low signals might consume more power than with data off. Don't you think?
Thanks!
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Click to collapse
if its constantly jumping to differing signal types, and quality is low when it is connected, then youd probably get better battery life with the data connection off.
simms22 said:
if its constantly jumping to differing signal types, and quality is low when it is connected, then youd probably get better battery life with the data connection off.
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However, he's thinking that you need to turn off mobile data while WiFi is on. This isn't true, it turns off/goes into standby until you need it.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
Where you can save a good chunk of battery is disabling WiFi while using data. You also need WiFi always scanning turned off for this to work.
As you have found out data is switched off automatically. The reason some people are doing that now is it might be a temporary fix for some WiFi connectivity issues.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Related
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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Click to collapse
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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Click to collapse
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
Title says it all.
Sent from my HTC Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App
Sure does not.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App
Not even comparable... data takes up tons of battery
Sent from my Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App
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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Click to collapse
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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can i run both wifi and 4g at the same time and will it drain my battery faster
randy6470 said:
can i run both wifi and 4g at the same time and will it drain my battery faster
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Click to collapse
No...so No
SENT FROM THE DOG POUND
Well, yes and no.
You can run the LTE chip set while you have Wifi enabled. However the wifi will take precedence over LTE, so you will be using wifi for data. The LTE will be connected in background, allowing you to receive MMS automatically and quickly connect to 4G after you turn wifi off. It will drain your battery faster but it won't make your interwebs faster.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using xda premium
I did not know that ..
Learned something new
Thanks ...
SENT FROM THE DOG POUND
kvswim said:
Well, yes and no.
You can run the LTE chip set while you have Wifi enabled. However the wifi will take precedence over LTE, so you will be using wifi for data. The LTE will be connected in background, allowing you to receive MMS automatically and quickly connect to 4G after you turn wifi off. It will drain your battery faster but it won't make your interwebs faster.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using xda premium
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just to elaborate further - leaving wifi on without a connection is the big drainer. leaving 4G on while connected to wifi does not (but I'll be testing some experiments on this theory today).
wifi
the reason i ask is i use a app called timeriffic and can set wifi on and off at differant times but if i turn wifi off i have to turn 4g on manually
was hoping to leave 4g on so when wifi is not connect my 4g is
randy6470 said:
the reason i ask is i use a app called timeriffic and can set wifi on and off at differant times but if i turn wifi off i have to turn 4g on manually
was hoping to leave 4g on so when wifi is not connect my 4g is
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Click to collapse
i leave both on all day - but I also set my wifi scan to 1800 (once every 30 minutes). this has almost no impact on my battery life. also, each time I enter an area with a known connection, it connects rather quickly.
update to this, when leaving on both WIFI and 4G (while maintaining a WIFI connection), my phone drains at about 3% per hour in an idle state. Last night, I turned off mobile data, and my battery drained about 1% per hour. thus, I'm curious to see why previously my phone was still using the mobile data when there was a wifi connection.....
It isn't"using" it per se, but it is holding the connection open and dormant so it can establish a connection quickly on need. With LTE, you're dealing with a separate radio from voice, so if it dropped the connection entirely, it would have to open the radio link before it could get data flowing, which can take several seconds or more. It's convenience over battery life.
thanks for all the great info guy i will just leave both on and see what battery life is :fingers-crossed:
It's kind of like having a hybrid car in hybrid mode it uses just electricity (wifi) but the gas is still idling (4g) but if you were to use only electricity you would have lost no gas i.e. better mileage i.e. better battery life.
Hello to anyone who read this thread :fingers-crossed:
My question is, when wifi is on, and I'm connected to a network, like home, work, school, etc. If 2G or 3G is also turned on, it isn't transfering data, but, is it consuming battery juice? just a little? or a lot? or none?
It's just that i'm lazy and think it's better that when I leave a wifi area, the phone keeps connected and I wouldn't have to remember to turn it on.
I don't like to use any kind of auto toggler or anything like that, and if it doesn't use battery, think my life would be easier
Thanks!
Zordak7 said:
Hello to anyone who read this thread :fingers-crossed:
My question is, when wifi is on, and I'm connected to a network, like home, work, school, etc. If 2G or 3G is also turned on, it isn't transfering data, but, is it consuming battery juice? just a little? or a lot? or none?
It's just that i'm lazy and think it's better that when I leave a wifi area, the phone keeps connected and I wouldn't have to remember to turn it on.
I don't like to use any kind of auto toggler or anything like that, and if it doesn't use battery, think my life would be easier
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah definately don't use an auto toggler those take more battery than they save. And over my years of android use i have never experienced a noticiable loss in battery from leaving data on while connected to wifi you should be just fine leaving it on as far as battery goes. It is true that you device can still use the data connection while connected to wifi (for instance MMS) but really I haven't noticed any extra battery suck.
Zordak7 said:
Hello to anyone who read this thread :fingers-crossed:
My question is, when wifi is on, and I'm connected to a network, like home, work, school, etc. If 2G or 3G is also turned on, it isn't transfering data, but, is it consuming battery juice? just a little? or a lot? or none?
It's just that i'm lazy and think it's better that when I leave a wifi area, the phone keeps connected and I wouldn't have to remember to turn it on.
I don't like to use any kind of auto toggler or anything like that, and if it doesn't use battery, think my life would be easier
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
leaving 3g on while wifi is connected doesn't suck your battery.. however I would recommend you to see that you don't leave wifi on when you are not connected... searching for wifi networks really takes hell lot of a battery :/
Great
Thanks for the answears, so now I'll keep the data turned on all the time.
I have Wifi set to turn off when the phone sleeps. During the evening, that usually results in the Wifi being active for about 30% of the time. Lately, (probably after a recent Google Play Services update), I noticed my Wifi is active 100% of the time. Anyone else notice this?
Lol, just noticed the same thing. For some reason it displays wifi as always on for me as well. Doesn't affect my battery life tho (not noticing it)
Sammath said:
Lol, just noticed the same thing. For some reason it displays wifi as always on for me as well. Doesn't affect my battery life tho (not noticing it)
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Click to collapse
OK good to know its just not me.
It's "on" but only connects when in an area where it has already connected before.
p51d007 said:
It's "on" but only connects when in an area where it has already connected before.
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Click to collapse
Yes I believe the behavior has not changed. However in my battery apps it's now showing WiFi active all the time. Previously, on would be 100% but active usually 50%. Now it's 100%
Maybe the app doesn't shut down the wifi connection completely but stops it from sending any data. Maybe the app justs shut down the wifi from ping-ing periodically but keeps the wifi one 100%.
Just my two cents
Wifi is on, but doesn't use that much power. It most likely is pinging at time, to see if a previously connected
wifi access point is available. I leave mine on 24/7, and haven't had any battery issues. In fact, with it on all the
time, my battery life is better because if I'm in an area where I've connected to wifi previously, it disables the
4G connection for data, and uses the wifi. Depending on your 4G connection, wifi could save your battery
life, since the amount of power required for the data part of the 4G signal, is dependent on your signal strength.
Low signal strength, more power required to connect.
p51d007 said:
Wifi is on, but doesn't use that much power. It most likely is pinging at time, to see if a previously connected
wifi access point is available. I leave mine on 24/7, and haven't had any battery issues. In fact, with it on all the
time, my battery life is better because if I'm in an area where I've connected to wifi previously, it disables the
4G connection for data, and uses the wifi. Depending on your 4G connection, wifi could save your battery
life, since the amount of power required for the data part of the 4G signal, is dependent on your signal strength.
Low signal strength, more power required to connect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great post thank you! The question is more out of curiosity since this behavior wasnt happening before. BTW, I think I figured out whats going on. In Location Settings, under the 3 dot menu I had Wifi Scanning option turned off. For whatever reason, the option was turned back on. No idea how this can happen but I disabled it again.