[Q] Battery Drain - wifi on vs. off - myTouch 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I have a question on the battery drain of this phone. Here's the situation:
I usually have 0 bars at home (total dead zone) and use wifi exclusively. At work, I have no wifi connection but full HSPA.
When I have wifi on at work, it seems like my battery drains SLOWER than if wifi is off. Case in point, every day I unplug the phone at 7am, fully charged. If wifi is on, at 3pm I get down to about 60%, but if wifi is off, at 3pm, I get down to around 30%. Usage is the same in both situation. A few youtube videos, a few IMs, a few text messages, reading a book for an hour at lunchtime, etc. That sort of thing.
I thought having wifi on all the time is a battery drain. So why is the battery drain much slower when wifi is on than when it is off? And spin off on that, will it do the same when bluetooth is on vs. off?

nmw407 said:
I have a question on the battery drain of this phone. Here's the situation:
I usually have 0 bars at home (total dead zone) and use wifi exclusively. At work, I have no wifi connection but full HSPA.
When I have wifi on at work, it seems like my battery drains SLOWER than if wifi is off. Case in point, every day I unplug the phone at 7am, fully charged. If wifi is on, at 3pm I get down to about 60%, but if wifi is off, at 3pm, I get down to around 30%. Usage is the same in both situation. A few youtube videos, a few IMs, a few text messages, reading a book for an hour at lunchtime, etc. That sort of thing.
I thought having wifi on all the time is a battery drain. So why is the battery drain much slower when wifi is on than when it is off? And spin off on that, will it do the same when bluetooth is on vs. off?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have found [in my case only] that Wi-Fi does not drain my battery near as much as Bluetooth. I leave my Wi-Fi on all the time and my battery is usually fine for 36 hours. If I use BT, my battery drains at a much higher rate.

Do you use wi-fi calling at work as well? With the cellular radio completely off, and a strong wifi signal, the battery drain might be less than a weak cellular signal.
I've also noticed that having wifi on doesn't drain the battery nearly as much as anticipated.

I don't use wifi calling at work since I don't get any wifi signal whatsoever. At home wifi calling is on. It's the only way I can make a call.
At work I have full HSPA speeds but the battery drain is ridiculous when wifi is turned off. I'm just curious as to why having wifi on would cause the drainage to be slower... not that I'm complaining.... it just seems counter-intuitive from what is supposed to be the norm.

I have Wi-Fi on almost 100% of the time and never turn off my cell antenna. I have great signal at home and at work. But I have tested the signal on nearby hotspots/wireless networks with low signal and it doesn't affect my battery anymore than when at home.

CBConsultation said:
I have found [in my case only] that Wi-Fi does not drain my battery near as much as Bluetooth. I leave my Wi-Fi on all the time and my battery is usually fine for 36 hours. If I use BT, my battery drains at a much higher rate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
36 hours??
wth

he underclocks heavily plus custom rom. I usually get 12-15 hrs with the wifi on but only 7-8 with the wifi off.

nmw407 said:
he underclocks heavily plus custom rom. I usually get 12-15 hrs with the wifi on but only 7-8 with the wifi off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bingo! You got it.

Related

Switching Wireless Networks

How can I set my phone up so that When I am at home or the office it uses WiFi, and if I am aay it automaticly switches over to medianet? I hate having to constantly switch the network.
if you have wifi on and leave wifi coverage it will always log onto edge if you have it set to gprs always on.
but then you dont want to have wifi on all the time; unless you want your phone to be dead in like 3 hours. When you are out of wifi coverage the wifi radio is still searching for connections so the battery still drains fast.
zeuzinn said:
but then you dont want to have wifi on all the time; unless you want your phone to be dead in like 3 hours. When you are out of wifi coverage the wifi radio is still searching for connections so the battery still drains fast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're exaggerating a bit -- I leave WiFi and BT on and go 3-4 days between charges. In my experience it's the phone function that drains the battery fastest.
3waygeek said:
zeuzinn said:
but then you dont want to have wifi on all the time; unless you want your phone to be dead in like 3 hours. When you are out of wifi coverage the wifi radio is still searching for connections so the battery still drains fast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're exaggerating a bit -- I leave WiFi and BT on and go 3-4 days between charges. In my experience it's the phone function that drains the battery fastest.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, you are actually right... It just hit me that , unlike GPRS, wifi gets completely disabled when the device is on stand-by and gets back when its woken up.
That being said, I still support the idea that the battery would be drained in about 3-5 hours if the phone didn't go into sleep mode.

WiFi or 3G, which eats more Power?

i use WiFi @ home and work, 3G everywhere else.
my battery was over 50% before bed, woke up with am with 5% left.....
so 45% of my battery life was eaten up in 8 hours with NO use?
any thoughts?
Wifi seems to be a real battery eater on this device (along with GPS). I leave it switched off unless I'm actively using it, and have no problems with battery life (it would last >24 hours if I let it.. I charge overnight though).
As there's no 3G switch on the widget I don't ever switch that off so haven't seen what improvement that would give. Cell Standby is still the largest user of battery, so maybe it would.
Set wifi to sleep when screen turns off.
There's an option for that? Not seen that one..
muncheese said:
Set wifi to sleep when screen turns off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't know you could do that, however, i already have that option selected....after i found it in the menu.
i guess i'll just have to experiment and see if 3G saves me power over the weekend.
Yeah I am pretty sure that option is the default. It still definitely drains more power with the WiFi enabled than without, sleeping or not. Not sure vs 3g, I disable or enable both as I need them.
I thought Wifi drains very little power ... with my phone on airplane mode and wifi only, the battery lasts over 30 hours with Meebo on, push e-mail on, and e-mail sync every 15 min.
Likewise, I have gps/wifi/2g/screen widgets on my main home page.
This doesn't exactly apply to the OP, but there's a nice app called "Y5 - Battery" in the market that switches off the WiFi radio in areas that you usually don't use WiFi.
Also, you can see what's draining your battery if you go to Settings > About Phone > Battery Use. There's some cool graphs showing where all your battery went since the last charge. Maybe you have a program that's running in the background that's sucking up all your battery.
I have had some battery drain issues since I received my N1 3 days ago. I found that Android 2.1 has a nice battery log (/d/battery_log) which updates every 50 - 55 seconds. In doing some tests to see what was killing my battery I can tell you that it isn't WiFi.
I would say that when in use, 3G draws a bit more than WiFi when actively used, but when WiFi is just idle it seems better than when 3G is connected and not in use.
In case anyone cares...I am still isolating all of the battery drain issues, but one of the biggest I have eliminated by uninstalling seems to be from BeautifulWidgets. I found it hard to believe, but my testing seems pretty clear. I also have a decent draw whenever I'm in the car with Bluetooth sync going. I would have had a hard time confirming this without this battery log file.
Wifi is extremely power efficient on this device.
I use the device on at&t edge and have the wifi turned on all day. the battery drain with pus email i about 4%/hour.
I think the combination of wifi PLUS being on an HSDPA network is killing your battery.
pus email? sounds gross
A quick calculation gives me 2.4% an hour, and that's with sync on, Wifi off, 3G on and using the phone a bit (not so much today). That's consistent with what I see normally - if you never actually used the phone you could push 3 days out of it.. but of course there wouldn't be much point in having it switched on then so it drops to about a day after a bit of driving w/bluetooth on, streaming music, etc.
Of course it's not really productive to look at battery life as 'how long can I make this last' (although knowing I can theoretically push it to 3 days plus is going to be useful on holiday). You work out your average day.. say up at 8am, turn in at midnight, so that's 16 hours actual time that it's needed (assuming you charge overnight like most do) - then fiddle with the settings based on your own use so you hit that comfortably. I'm probably being overconservative right now.. I'm finishing the day with nearly 50% battery left & need to ramp it up a bit Maybe a few more games of Frozen Bubble..
http://www.google.com/phone/static/en_US-nexusone_tech_specs.html
According to the Google spec sheet:
Power and battery
Removable 1400 mAH battery
Charges at 480mA from USB, at 980mA from supplied charger
Talk time Up to 10 hours on 2G
Up to 7 hours on 3G
Standby time Up to 290 hours on 2G
Up to 250 hours on 3G
Internet use Up to 5 hours on 3G
Up to 6.5 hours on Wi-Fi
Video playback Up to 7 hours
Audio playback Up to 20 hours
I'd love to see someone get 12 days of standby!
The specs for mobile phones are always a bit of a fiction.. maybe you could do that if you put it in airplane mode and if you never activated the display at all...
I had a Sony Erricson that claimed 800 hours (over a month!) of Standby. Never got it over 2 days..
Would be interesting to see if anyone has managed 10 hours or even 7 hours of talk time... personally I doubt it.
TonyHoyle said:
I'd love to see someone get 12 days of standby!
The specs for mobile phones are always a bit of a fiction.. maybe you could do that if you put it in airplane mode and if you never activated the display at all...
I had a Sony Erricson that claimed 800 hours (over a month!) of Standby. Never got it over 2 days..
Would be interesting to see if anyone has managed 10 hours or even 7 hours of talk time... personally I doubt it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some phones in Airplane Mode when not used can do those kind of numbers though. My K800 lasted about 2 weeks in standby when running like above. Though that just proves how pointless such numbers are.
So when using wifi, is 3g auto turned off?
galaxys said:
So when using wifi, is 3g auto turned off?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would assume the data aspect is, but the 3G voice is still active, even with WiFi on.

Battery life draining too fast; "Android OS" to blame?

I've noticed that my battery life is draining somewhat faster than seems reasonable...
After 7 hours away from my charger I'm at 36% remaining, and frankly haven't used the phone much today. Two 5 minute calls and a bit of playing with email.
The battery status shows that 'Android OS' is using 43% of the battery at the moment. Next after that is the screen at 19%.
Is that normal? Or have I installed something that is draining away at it? What is the best app to identify the malevolent drainer?
Many thanks in advance!
my "Android OS" is always somewhere around 2-3%. You running stock build? mebby reboot the phone and check again?
Stock build.
Have rebooted and killed most of the apps that came along with the reboot. Will watch it over the rest of the day and see if the problem repeats.
Screen usually 70% Android 2-3%.
Mine was horrible then i saw an app G backup.that I had on auto eating up 40%... changed it to manual and eliminated that and an overheating issue... Wierd.
I have been having issues with battery life also. My cell standby was using 65-85% between charges. It would go down to 20-25% battery life after 7-8 hrs with little to no use. I did a factory reset and everything was great for one day, cell standby dropped to about 4%. I added some apps, recharged overnight, and in the morning after 1 hr battery was down to 80%, cell standby back up to 75%. not sure if it's an app i installed or not. At home i have been using a different micro usb charger, not the stock one. I'm wondering if that could be the cause. I did a 2nd factory wipe this morning and now cell standy is back to 4%. I'm going to only use the OEM charger and only add apps 1 at a time to try and narrow down the cause.
do you have the 3g problem?
my guess is ... if your phone keep switching between 3g/edge or umts/hsdpa
you keep using wireless radio and thus consumes much more power
no, I've never had any 3g problems, other than only getting a max download speed of about .8Mbps.
I called HTC about the high cell standby usage and they suggested - turning screen brightness all the way down, turn off GPS, turn off bluetooth, turn off wifi, etc... If I have to have everything turned off so my battery won't die then what's the point of having an otherwise awesome phone. It's been an hour now since unplugging and cell standby is at 20%, battery life at 98%. I guess we'll see...
Battery issues are almost always due to apps (or services) running, especially ones that are constantly using a data connection.
That's why Apple don't allow the iphone to run anything in the background ;-)
If it was fine after reset and then bad after you added some apps then you know one of them is to blame......
My nexus one has been unplugged for 24 hours now and is at 66% (fairly light use in that time to be fair).
it's possible that android synching could cause usage to spike to those levels, but that shouldn't be happening very often.
I leave syncing on all the time and my phone is easily 14 or 15 hours to get to 20% with what sounds like heavier usage than what konsta is reporting.
I read some guy solved most of the battery issues by turning off GPS. I'm now following this practise after a full charge from completely dead to see how it goes. I normally have to charge once per day, I do use the phone quite a lot, not much for phone calls though, twitter, facebook, sms, tech news etc!
I think that my "Android OS" drain must have been a one-time event (hope so, anyway). After my reboot I'm now up to cell standby as my primary usage. I've spent a fair bit of time in the last few hours in patchy signal areas, so seems fair.
Will see how long it lasts tomorrow.
I agree that the GPS seems to be the biggest battery killer. Completely drained my machine in next to no time when I was playing with Copilot live.
I am actually impressed with the battery life on the n1. I can keep GPS on and use it, playing games on the train and answering emails and calls all day long with seesmic constantly running and easily get through the entire day. If I don't charge it overnight I will be about 15-20% remainig in the morning. I have stock android os on an unlocked n1.
Power drain solved....
Hi every one.
My battery life to was abismal, that was until I read this over on Modaco.
GSM 2G+3G ("WCDMA preferred") drains battery over 5 times faster than exclusive 3G ("WCDMA Only")
Average battery drain / hour when phone is idle with screen off:
1-Standard shipping mode WCDMA prefered, i.e. both 2G and 3G enabled, Wifi off): 10% / hour
2-Alternate WCDMA Only mode, 3G exclusively, no Wifi: 1.7% / hour
So I tried changing the phone settings from WCDMA prefered to WCDMA only. WOW battery life instanly better!!! 3G still works and phone OK.
To do this enter *#*#4636#*#* on phone dial pad, select phone information, then scroll down to selection box, change set preferred network type to WCDMA only. Switch phone to airplane mode, then switch airplane off and watch your battery performance increase by 300% plus...
gadjet said:
Hi every one.
My battery life to was abismal, that was until I read this over on Modaco.
GSM 2G+3G ("WCDMA preferred") drains battery over 5 times faster than exclusive 3G ("WCDMA Only")
Average battery drain / hour when phone is idle with screen off:
1-Standard shipping mode WCDMA prefered, i.e. both 2G and 3G enabled, Wifi off): 10% / hour
2-Alternate WCDMA Only mode, 3G exclusively, no Wifi: 1.7% / hour
So I tried changing the phone settings from WCDMA prefered to WCDMA only. WOW battery life instanly better!!! 3G still works and phone OK.
To do this enter *#*#4636#*#* on phone dial pad, select phone information, then scroll down to selection box, change set preferred network type to WCDMA only. Switch phone to airplane mode, then switch airplane off and watch your battery performance increase by 300% plus...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you on T-Mobile?
gadjet said:
Hi every one.
My battery life to was abismal, that was until I read this over on Modaco.
GSM 2G+3G ("WCDMA preferred") drains battery over 5 times faster than exclusive 3G ("WCDMA Only")
Average battery drain / hour when phone is idle with screen off:
1-Standard shipping mode WCDMA prefered, i.e. both 2G and 3G enabled, Wifi off): 10% / hour
2-Alternate WCDMA Only mode, 3G exclusively, no Wifi: 1.7% / hour
So I tried changing the phone settings from WCDMA prefered to WCDMA only. WOW battery life instanly better!!! 3G still works and phone OK.
To do this enter *#*#4636#*#* on phone dial pad, select phone information, then scroll down to selection box, change set preferred network type to WCDMA only. Switch phone to airplane mode, then switch airplane off and watch your battery performance increase by 300% plus...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you on T-Mobile? Do you have a fairly strong 3g. signal ? if one did have a fairly strong 3g signal would this still be advisable?
rockky said:
Are you on T-Mobile? Do you have a fairly strong 3g. signal ? if one did have a fairly strong 3g signal would this still be advisable?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi rockky.
No I am on Orange, I usually only get a full strength 3G at my works and not usually at home, however since getting a Nexus 1 i now get a limited 3G at home..
after uninstalling mobile defense and city caller id my bat went back to normal.
I noticed pretty good battery improvement when I turned off GPS (only turn it on when I need it).

Battery Life on Wifi - Outstanding!!

Basically, when I leave wi-fi on my phone has incredible battery life. If someone has already mentioned this feel free to bury this post, but to my knowledge it doesn't seem this has been posted yet.
With wi-fi off and 3g on
- Battery lost 5-6 percent per hour
Wi-fi on
- Battery lost 1-2 percent per hour (sometimes less than 1 percent depending on what your doing)
Right now after having my phone on for 34 hours my battery is still at 70 percent! I'm fairly certain this is because it disables the 3g radio altogether which apparently is a real battery hog. That or maybe my phone is just a fluke. I really don't know.
This also seems to be tied to the htc sense rom (correct me if im wrong) but if i remember correctly battery drainage increased when wifi was enabled in the stock rom. Currently, I'm using the latest htc sense rom from modaco, I'd really enjoy hearing if enabling wifi helps others extend their battery life.
your having better battery life with the Desire ROMs? that odd, my battery life with a Desire ROM was 20-30% worse compared to stock.
amlwaycooljr said:
Basically, when I leave wi-fi on my phone has incredible battery life. If someone has already mentioned this feel free to bury this post, but to my knowledge it doesn't seem this has been posted yet.
With wi-fi off and 3g on
- Battery lost 5-6 percent per hour
Wi-fi on
- Battery lost 1-2 percent per hour (sometimes less than 1 percent depending on what your doing)
Right now after having my phone on for 34 hours my battery is still at 70 percent! I'm fairly certain this is because it disables the 3g radio altogether which apparently is a real battery hog. That or maybe my phone is just a fluke. I really don't know.
This also seems to be tied to the htc sense rom (correct me if im wrong) but if i remember correctly battery drainage increased when wifi was enabled in the stock rom. Currently, I'm using the latest htc sense rom from modaco, I'd really enjoy hearing if enabling wifi helps others extend their battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, it's a well known fact that 3G uses more power on most (every?) phones than Wifi... so you're not alone.
Hey when you say WIFI on..do you mean WIFI and EDGE or did you completely disabled the radio?
I never would have thought having wifi on would extend battery life to such a great extent though, in most of the latest cell phone reviews and what not everyone recommends to have wifi off saves battery life but in this case just the opposite is true. I kinda knew the wifi was more efficient but I never expected such a large benefit from leaving wifi on all the time.
@ram130 I haven't actually touched the radios at all so I expect them all to be on or at the very least have edge on, I am able to receive and send calls and txt so I'm assuming at least some cell radio has to be on. All I did was use the htc sense rom and enable wifi.
The cellular radio is still on, but 3G/Edge (data) are disconnected. I don't know how Edge compares to Wifi, but 3G is a battery killer in comparison.
uansari1 said:
The cellular radio is still on, but 3G/Edge (data) are disconnected. I don't know how Edge compares to Wifi, but 3G is a battery killer in comparison.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
amlwaycooljr said:
I never would have thought having wifi on would extend battery life to such a great extent though, in most of the latest cell phone reviews and what not everyone recommends to have wifi off saves battery life but in this case just the opposite is true. I kinda knew the wifi was more efficient but I never expected such a large benefit from leaving wifi on all the time.
@ram130 I haven't actually touched the radios at all so I expect them all to be on or at the very least have edge on, I am able to receive and send calls and txt so I'm assuming at least some cell radio has to be on. All I did was use the htc sense rom and enable wifi.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In other words you have "use 2G networks" checked right?
I'm gonna try this is now. I'm currently at 3hr 32m unplugged with 80% left. I have wifi enabled and on the stock rom. So I'll post back when I wake in a few a hours and see how it goes.
My only problem:
Wifi seems to disconnect alot during the hour regardless if sleep policy is set to NEVER. My wifi signal is -78dBm to -86dBm in my room and on channel 11(used wifi analyzer). Any suggestions why?
I have the same experience at home, I enable Wifi and leave the phone stay home for a couple of days and battery still 40%, when I go out and wifi is not connected, 3G kicks in and battery drops much faster.
I'm using cyanogen 5.0.4.1
Interesting. Did not know this!
I guess I won't feel so bad about leaving my phone on Wifi all day!
Also, does anyone know how much power is used by not having a radio signal and letting it constantly search? That seems to destroy my battery. But sometimes I am in an area with wifi but no radio access (deep within a building).
It's too bad this phone doesn't have UMA - that would make up for T-Mobile's lack of indoor coverage (at times), and probably improve battery life a lot in some cases.
But I have to say that on another phones I've used, especially WinMo devices, using WiFi instead of 3G seemed to always use more battery. But, it could very well be different on this phone...I'm definitely going to give this a try.
im not sure about the percentage but i agree,the battery drain is considerably more when searching for radio.im in a building most of the day and it doesnt take long.miss the UMA i had on my bberry.
Paul22000 said:
Interesting. Did not know this!
I guess I won't feel so bad about leaving my phone on Wifi all day!
Also, does anyone know how much power is used by not having a radio signal and letting it constantly search? That seems to destroy my battery. But sometimes I am in an area with wifi but no radio access (deep within a building).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also Get. About 25% better battery on wifi
Well after 10hrs of the phone being on stand by I woke up. It was at 46%!! my god. Anyway I checked my email, read an article all taking around 15mins and guess what? I had 30% left!. I put it back to stand by for 3hrs and took a look at it and had about 16% left...
It is now charging after one hour with just 10min use of downloading apps ..Can ANYONE tell me why my battery is draining so much on wifi? When its on EDGE for the night after 10hr I would have around 70% left from a full charge. Anyone can help me out here?
I shall be getting a replacement battery for free Tuesday.
Stock android.
ram130 said:
Well after 10hrs of the phone being on stand by I woke up. It was at 46%!! my god. Anyway I checked my email, read an article all taking around 15mins and guess what? I had 30% left!. I put it back to stand by for 3hrs and took a look at it and had about 16% left...
It is now charging after one hour with just 10min use of downloading apps ..Can ANYONE tell me why my battery is draining so much on wifi? When its on EDGE for the night after 10hr I would have around 70% left from a full charge. Anyone can help me out here?
I shall be getting a replacement battery for free Tuesday.
Stock android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you set your phone to only use 2G networks also? If you're not charging, wifi will probably disable after not being used for a while..so it's probably rolling to 3G if you haven't disabled it.
I'm not saying it's convenient to constantly switch back and forth... but this explains why it may not be a good test of the battery life the way you're running it.
uansari1 said:
Did you set your phone to only use 2G networks also? If you're not charging, wifi will probably disable after not being used for a while..so it's probably rolling to 3G if you haven't disabled it.
I'm not saying it's convenient to constantly switch back and forth... but this explains why it may not be a good test of the battery life the way you're running it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well yes I have it on 2G only. Any thing else could be contributing to it dying so fast?
Well I found a way to use my laptop as an AP. So I connected my N1 to it and getting full bars(-41dBm) in my room now. No wifi disconnects so far!(maybe it was my linksys before ?).. So far the battery is at 86% with some 3D games, been unplug for 1hr 50min now. I'll put it to stand by now and see how it looks after 10hrs.
I'm on a stock firmware(not rooted). 2G only selected.
The way I understand it is as follows:
Phone is on STANDBY:
3g==2g* which are both more efficient then wifi (that's why the default wifi policy turns wifi off if it's not being used)**
Phone is ACTIVE:
wifi is more efficient then 2g/3g because:
1) It's waaay faster and thus causes less battery drain* and
2) The AP (router) is much closer to the phone then the cell tower so in theory it doesn't need to use as much power to talk to the router.
*http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/CodingLifeBatteryLife.html
4:45min into it there is a power usage chart and 3G/EDGE idle power usage is about the same - also somewhere else in the video they talk about wifi vs 3g usage when transferring data.
** http://code.google.com/p/sipdroid/wiki/NewStandbyTechnique
States that 3g standby is more efficient then wifi
drak0 said:
** http://code.google.com/p/sipdroid/wiki/NewStandbyTechnique
States that 3g standby is more efficient then wifi
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Someone needs to test this ok. ...already testing wifi
Ok I'm at 11hrs 30min on wifi and its at 67% with light usage(checking email, news for 5min)..improvement? kinda, because since turning off my laptop it switched back to getting low signal(-81dBm) from the router in the next room. Weird? I'm still thinking. anyway I'm heading out so gonna use the phone more today, lets see if it gets me through the day.
Still no where near the thread starter 30hrs!! Maybe stock really sucks? bad battery anyone??
@ram130 I'm not sure how my battery is lasting as long as it has so far. I'm up to what would be an insane number, 65 hours 36 percent left .. this battery just wont die. I haven't the slightest idea how it's lasting this long I just leave wifi on all the time and turn wifi standby off. If anyone could explain how leaving wifi on more than quadruples my battery life I'd sure love to know.

Wifi vs 3g power draw

My friend told me that staying connected to a wifi connection is less demanding powerwise. I always thought keeping the wifi attenna on would drain more power because ur running to attenndas at once. Anyone care to chime in with their opinions?
I have no real data to back this up, but it does seem like my battery lasts longer with wifi on. I believe the 3G radio shuts off when there is an active wifi connection but i could be wrong.
lilgrass71 said:
My friend told me that staying connected to a wifi connection is less demanding powerwise. I always thought keeping the wifi attenna on would drain more power because ur running to attenndas at once. Anyone care to chime in with their opinions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Correct for the most part. So long as you're connected to a stable WiFi signal, of course.
3G data constantly looks for available HA's (Home Agents) to deliver the best upload/download speed, and, depending on how much you use your data, the constant on/off of using 3G causes the fast battery drain.
Modifying your HA in data settings will reduce the amount of ping attempts 3G will make, but you will still get the battery drain every time you use data. Keep in mind that sending SMS or making phone calls don't use 3G, but if you don't have 3G turned off, it will always switch to 1X during these processes. If you're a heavy texter, rule of thumb is to leave 3G off during the day unless you are going to be using it consistently for a period of time. This will save you a great amount of battery life.
Wifi is MUCH easier on battery for me.
^ Shift Faced
jesusice said:
Wifi is MUCH easier on battery for me.
^ Shift Faced
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I totally agree. At home my battery stays between 90-100% for a full 24 hours before it starts to drop on my Moment using the ubuntroid 4.2 ROM. If I pull my phone off the charger in the morning for work I'm at 70% by the time I get back home.

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