Wifi demolishes battery

[ericmazariegos]

I just noticed something kind of huge. For the past month I've been enjoying T-Mobile's free 3 month 4g LTE offer. I've pretty much never turned on wifi since December 1st, and I have realized something - wifi, for whatever reason, uses up way more battery than LTE does. Why is this? I think it might have something to do with background processes. It seems that when I do turn wifi on, a whole bunch of background processes start to commence, or they just kick into overdrive. I'm guessing it's because the system wants to handle all of the big data consuming stuff over wifi. But the thing is that I've literally not even noticed anything different in performance or sync status while exclusively using LTE. The only thing I know for sure isn't happening is that my photos are not syncing to Google Photos, but I can live with that. All I have to do is turn on wifi at night before charging my phone and they'll sync up fine. Anyway, my suspicions are further corroborated by looking at the battery monitor. Previously, I would get 'Awake' times at seemingly random times. As I understand it, you only want Awake times to match up with 'Screen On' times. In the screenshot I provided u can see that the phone is barely ever waking up while the screen is off, which is something I WISH would happen when wifi is on! I'll reiterate, when wifi is on it seems like the background processes just run amok. Finally, I got 4 hours and then some of screen-on time with the phone at 26% currently. I didn't charge it all night and it was at 31% when I fell asleep. Woke up with it at 28% (look at that beautiful flat slope!)
What gives?? I've had my concerns about wifi battery issues for a while but this literally confirms it. As a test, a week ago or so I did turn on wifi just to see if it made a difference in battery life. And yes, it did! Is this just an android issue. My iPad has been sitting in a corner for a week with wifi and push notifications on and the battery has only gone down like 2%, pretty outrageously good.
Just letting everyone know. Try this out! Idk if this is worth actually paying unlimited data for, but at least, just try to keep wifi OFF as much as possible. Peace out guys

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[muzzy996]

As you're noting in your post, some apps will self enforce a lower usage policy when it comes to connection type such as only syncing when on WiFi so it shouldn't be a surprise that with WiFi enabled there'd be additional activity. I wouldn't necessarily pin the higher battery usage to WiFi alone though; sure there's a possibility that the WiFi modem uses more energy, but there's also the fact that given the increased activity of some apps the CPU state will not be in deep sleep mode as much as it would be with WiFi off so . . . . less sleep, more power usage.

 

[GentleMuser]

My Note 4 drains the battery MUCH faster when WiFi is enabled!! And it's always "Google Services" leading the battery.
This had gotten much much better after 5.1.1, but has now returned to Google Services dominating my battery usage......

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[sinfoman]

I almost invariably leave my wi-fi on. It's the apps themselves. Do as I have done turn off ALL automatic updates. All of them. Google, FB, etc. DELETE FACEBOOK if it's on your phone. Trust me on this one. Worst battery suck on the planet. Finally go through EVERY app on your phone and check the settings. Most of them have a "download over wi-fi only" setting. This effectively uses the wi-fi as a "pause" restart" button. For giggles, leave everything on your phone status quo. Turn off the wi-fi. Go into the recently used apps (second page soft key, bottom left) and close them all. Power cycle the phone. SET IT DOWN. DON'T TOUCH IT. WALK AWAY for 10 minutes. Go to system settings --> Power Saving (or developer options--> process stats is better if you have dev options enabled). Take a screen shot of the items using your battery life. Close the app with the back button and close the recently used apps again. Finally, turn on WI-FI. WALK AWAY FOR ANOTHER TEN MINUTES. DON'T TOUCH the phone. Go back into battery/dev and see what's different. This will give you a good indication of what's messing w/ your battery. I can tell you I'm a moderate user who regularly gets 1.5-2 days out of my battery. The phone was bought in May.