Wifi turning off in sleep mode

cianpop

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Hi,
I am noticing over the last few days that occasionally when I pick up my phone after it's been 'asleep' (screen off) for a while, that the phone has fallen off my Wifi network and gone onto 3G. This is kinda annoying as I have a very limited 3G data plan and don't want to use it when I don't have to. Does anybody have any ideas what might be causing this?

I'm running Cyanogen 5.0.6, and am using SetCPU, and have a sleep profile set up of 499/245 (set up as ondemand) and was wondering if this could be causing it? Is it possible that when the the CPU is running at that speed it just shuts off the Wifi? That said, it doesn't happen every time, so I don't know what it is. It could be something completely different, so if anyone has any ideas please let me know.

Cheers,
Cian
 

RayStinkle

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yes you have to go into seettings, under wifi, then press menu button. now an advanced menu pops up, set your wifi sleep policy to NEVER. the default is set to sleep, so you want to change this.
 

icebike

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yes you have to go into seettings, under wifi, then press menu button. now an advanced menu pops up, set your wifi sleep policy to NEVER. the default is set to sleep, so you want to change this.

And oddly enough, this setting of NEVER does not seem to have a big effect on battery.

In fact it may even be a positive affect, as using the 3G radio probably takes more power. Eric's Corner: Which uses more power? WiFi or 3G?
 

RayStinkle

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And oddly enough, this setting of NEVER does not seem to have a big effect on battery.

In fact it may even be a positive affect, as using the 3G radio probably takes more power. Eric's Corner: Which uses more power? WiFi or 3G?

it absolutely increased my battery life. with wifi always on, i lost 11% battery in 12 hours. i went from 100% to 89% in a 12 hour period leaving my phone on wifi with sleep policy set to NEVER.

for some reason this 3G radio just DESTROYS the phone's battery.
 

cianpop

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Hey, thanks a million, i changed that setting and hopefully it'll solve it. I must have just not noticed it before. I will update again in a few days in case anything changes.

On a side note, RogerPodacter: how the hell did you get 12hours out of the battery at all, never mind having 89% at the end of it. I burn through battery, though I think CM is part of the problem to be honest.
 

RayStinkle

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Hey, thanks a million, i changed that setting and hopefully it'll solve it. I must have just not noticed it before. I will update again in a few days in case anything changes.

On a side note, RogerPodacter: how the hell did you get 12hours out of the battery at all, never mind having 89% at the end of it. I burn through battery, though I think CM is part of the problem to be honest.

ever since i changed my setting in the *#*#4636#*#* menu from wcdma preferred to gsm auto (PRL) my battery life has increased a whole lot. and yes the phone still uses 3G with this setting, i dont know why it works but it does seem to work for "most" people who try this. a few dont see any improvement, but most do.
 

icebike

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On a side note, RogerPodacter: how the hell did you get 12hours out of the battery at all, never mind having 89% at the end of it. I burn through battery, though I think CM is part of the problem to be honest.

With everything up and running I get 20 hours (measured by Battery Last app).

That's pretty reasonable for a smart phone these days. I have wifi on all the time and I'm in wifi range most of the day.

One thing that helped me was use Gmail, or Imap servers that support imap-idleD, (and maybe exchange?), and avoid pop mail, and avoid polling: use push.

It take way less power to keep a socket open in a wireless environment than it takes to poll a server. k-9 mail is awesome for this.

Avoid pointless social network location logging. - Nobody cares where you are, and they keep the radio needlessly busy.

I use the phone a LOT. Its not like I baby it.

Stock att model.
 

icebike

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ever since i changed my setting in the *#*#4636#*#* menu from wcdma preferred to gsm auto (PRL) my battery life has increased a whole lot. and yes the phone still uses 3G with this setting, i dont know why it works but it does seem to work for "most" people who try this. a few dont see any improvement, but most do.

What that does Roger, is tells your phone to connect using EDGE, and obtain a Preferred Roaming List (PRL) from the tower, and THEN switch to 3G when a data channel is required (which in the N1, is pretty much always because people are checking mail etc all the time).

WCDMA preferred has the phone try to find 3G directly. This takes more power until a connection is established.

You can verify this in the 4636 display, below the Run Ping Test button. You will see the Network Type say EDGE, then, after a bit, it will switch to HSPDA.

If your phone is near your computer speakers, you will hear edge chatter as it obtains its Preferred Roaming List. You may periodically hear a lot of EDGE chatter if you have nothing requiring a data channel running, because it might drop to edge and stay there for unexplained reasons.

Depending on your towers and service availability, you may see no difference in this at all. I live in a strong 3G area, and this does not help me at all. In fringe 3G areas or in 3G areas where there are a lot of 3G phones (cities, near schools, etc) this will help quite a bit.

In Edge only areas it saves a lot of battery by not searching for HSPDA when it does not exist.

Note: I also see something of a speed test hit on GSM (PRL), but this may be just the speed test app doing odd things.
 
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Jerry Hildenbrand

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http://www.androidcentral.com/keeping-your-charge-how-improve-battery-life-your-android-phone

I routinely get ~36-40 hours out of a full charge on my N1. In the article I linked there's a picture of my phone 15 hours off the charger with 73% battery still left.

Nexus-1-battery-stats.png
 

icebike

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Oh: one more thing I've noticed with GSM (PRL) mode is that the phone will occasionally drop to No Signal mode. I've NEVER seen that while running HSPDA Preferred. (ATT version of N1).

I'm going to stay on GSM/PRL for a day or three to measure battery performance, but if that keeps up, I'm going right back to the default.
 

RayStinkle

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What that does Roger, is tells your phone to connect using EDGE, and obtain a Preferred Roaming List (PRL) from the tower, and THEN switch to 3G when a data channel is required (which in the N1, is pretty much always because people are checking mail etc all the time).

WCDMA preferred has the phone try to find 3G directly. This takes more power until a connection is established.

You can verify this in the 4636 display, below the Run Ping Test button. You will see the Network Type say EDGE, then, after a bit, it will switch to HSPDA.

If your phone is near your computer speakers, you will hear edge chatter as it obtains its Preferred Roaming List. You may periodically hear a lot of EDGE chatter if you have nothing requiring a data channel running, because it might drop to edge and stay there for unexplained reasons.

Depending on your towers and service availability, you may see no difference in this at all. I live in a strong 3G area, and this does not help me at all. In fringe 3G areas or in 3G areas where there are a lot of 3G phones (cities, near schools, etc) this will help quite a bit.

In Edge only areas it saves a lot of battery by not searching for HSPDA when it does not exist.

Note: I also see something of a speed test hit on GSM (PRL), but this may be just the speed test app doing odd things.

OK that makes sense, i definitely noticed that it went to EDGE for about 5 seconds then went right back to 3G. however using this setting the phone still stays on 3G 100% of the time, all day, everyday. so in terms of that i dont see any difference, and my speed tests are still the same, usually 2-3Mbps download. the one thing that is different is my battery life shot way up. i dont know why they wouldnt make this the default setting on the phone.

i think it depends on the network. because there are some people who dont see any increase whatsoever with this setting. and then others see a tremendous difference. like me. i lost 11% in 12 hours, i mean, how crazy is that? and it was on 3g the whole time.
 

icebike

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My N1 drops to no-signal too often with GSM(PRL).

I've gone to back to the default WCDMA Preferred.

Maybe its just my area, but it does not seem rational. Any way, 20 hours battery is just fine.
 

cianpop

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Just to say, changing that setting to stop wifi sleeping worked perfectly. The gsm prl thing didn't really seem to make a battery difference , but then again I live in strong 3g.

Thanks a million to everyone.

Sent from my Nexus One using Tapatalk
 

AndyK

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What that does Roger, is tells your phone to connect using EDGE, and obtain a Preferred Roaming List (PRL) from the tower, and THEN switch to 3G when a data channel is required (which in the N1, is pretty much always because people are checking mail etc all the time).

WCDMA preferred has the phone try to find 3G directly. This takes more power until a connection is established.

You can verify this in the 4636 display, below the Run Ping Test button. You will see the Network Type say EDGE, then, after a bit, it will switch to HSPDA.

If your phone is near your computer speakers, you will hear edge chatter as it obtains its Preferred Roaming List. You may periodically hear a lot of EDGE chatter if you have nothing requiring a data channel running, because it might drop to edge and stay there for unexplained reasons.

Depending on your towers and service availability, you may see no difference in this at all. I live in a strong 3G area, and this does not help me at all. In fringe 3G areas or in 3G areas where there are a lot of 3G phones (cities, near schools, etc) this will help quite a bit.

In Edge only areas it saves a lot of battery by not searching for HSPDA when it does not exist.

Note: I also see something of a speed test hit on GSM (PRL), but this may be just the speed test app doing odd things.

Thank you for an excellent explanation

However I have a question that requires a bit of info first:
My carrier is a WCDMA only carrier (it has the best WCDMA coverage in my country), but from the very beginning it has had a roaming agreement with another carrier, allowing customers to roam on said other carriers (truly excellent) GSM net when no WCDMA coverage is present.
However as my carrier's WCDMA coverage has become better and better, they have recently made the decision to cancel the roaming agreement in select areas (I'm only sure of one city where they have cancelled the roaming agreement).
My question is then:
How will my phone react when set to GSM auto (PRL) when no GSM coverage is present? Will it be impossible for it to register on the network as no GSM network is available to connect to and retreive the PRL from?

Thanks in advance
 

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