Battery Use - BT Vs. WiFi

[PsychDoc]

This seems to me to be the question I most often come back to with a wearable like the S2. It has a tiny battery so managing power use is of the utmost importance. I have, as yet, seen no authoritative articles which address which is better for battery life. As your S2 will do virtually anything the same whether linked to your phone via BT or linked to a WiFi network I think we really need to get some clarity on which is the better power miser option.

It has been my purely anecdotal experience that BT seems to draw considerably more power than WiFi so I have turned off BT when possible. I know that others have expressed the exact opposite opinion - that WiFi consumes far more power than BT.

I thought it might be helpful if we could consolidate all these opinions in one poll/thread. Of course any authoritative article on the subject that anyone could link would be most appreciated as that might take us out of the realm of subjective experience or mere "opinion."

 

[Rukbat]

Wifi power varies as the incoming signal, BT is fixed. Considering the frequency (they both operate around 2.4GHz), and the fact that the human body absorbs a lot of energy at those frequencies, I'd guess (I've never measured it) that wifi would end up drawing more power over the course of a day. (Wear the watch on the opposite side of your body that you carry the phone, use BT, and see how often the watch isn't getting any signal. With wifi it just increases its output power (costing battery) to make up for that huge signal absorber blocking the signal from the phone.