Does poor mobile and wi-fi signal drain battery?

[Android Central Question]

Hello

I have a Samsung S6 Edge. I work in an office where my mobile signal in general is very poor. Quite often my signal bar is on 1 bar or none. Its quite common to pick up the phone and see the 'emergency calls only' displayed. With such a bad signal, needless to say my mobile data signal is very bad too. Quite often I can hardly load a web page or view a video.

With the mobile signal being so poor I am forced to use my Work wi-fi. However I believe my work wi-fi signal is very poor too. I also believe the wi-fi router has a setting to disconnect a user if it has not consumed any data within a short period of time. I know this because I can be on-line on the work wi-fi. Then put my phone down. 20 minutes later pick it up and unlock it, I have no active wi-fi connection. I then notice the router seems to notice I am active again and reconnects to the router. I then need to click on 'sign into network' again to get on-line.

If I am at home all day long and connected to my wi-fi, my battery does pretty ok and will last the day. However I can come to work in the morning fully charged and leave after 8 hours with little battery left. I am not a heavy user of the phone. On an average work day I probably browse normal text based websites for approx 1 hour. No huge amount of video or streaming heavy content.
With all these bad signals, I get the feeling my phone is always reaching out looking to find a signal, trying over and over and I believe this is badly eating up my battery.

Does this sound rational to anyone?
The problem is with such a bad mobile signal at work I really do not have any other choice.

Many thanks
Gaz

 

[Javier P]

Welcome to the forums. Yes, it sounds completely rational. A weak or non-existent signal will drain your battery pretty quickly.

 

[pkcable]

Welcome, please join the site so you can reply in this thread. See this link for instructions on how to join Android Central.

YES it's killing your battery! Bad signal and searching for will definitely drain your battery. Screen brightness is another killer, and playing games or videos on your phone. And of course actual phone calls.

 

[Rukbat]

If the mobile signal is poor or non-existent, the phone switches to maximum transmit power (since a weak signal coming in means a weak signal received at the tower too) - and that drains the battery. The same situation doesn't occur with wifi, because the phone doesn't have to keep the wifi router notified of its current location all the time, but when you do use it, the phone will, again, switch to higher power on wifi if the signal is weak ((and use more power). Lack of a wifi signal, though won't use much more battery, just a little, because the phone is searching for wifi signals. You can turn that off on the wifi page in Settings.

 

[xplod566]

Hello

I have a Samsung S6 Edge. I work in an office where my mobile signal in general is very poor. Quite often my signal bar is on 1 bar or none. Its quite common to pick up the phone and see the 'emergency calls only' displayed. With such a bad signal, needless to say my mobile data signal is very bad too. Quite often I can hardly load a web page or view a video.

With the mobile signal being so poor I am forced to use my Work wi-fi. However I believe my work wi-fi signal is very poor too. I also believe the wi-fi router has a setting to disconnect a user if it has not consumed any data within a short period of time. I know this because I can be on-line on the work wi-fi. Then put my phone down. 20 minutes later pick it up and unlock it, I have no active wi-fi connection. I then notice the router seems to notice I am active again and reconnects to the router. I then need to click on 'sign into network' again to get on-line.

If I am at home all day long and connected to my wi-fi, my battery does pretty ok and will last the day. However I can come to work in the morning fully charged and leave after 8 hours with little battery left. I am not a heavy user of the phone. On an average work day I probably browse normal text based websites for approx 1 hour. No huge amount of video or streaming heavy content.
With all these bad signals, I get the feeling my phone is always reaching out looking to find a signal, trying over and over and I believe this is badly eating up my battery.

Does this sound rational to anyone?
The problem is with such a bad mobile signal at work I really do not have any other choice.

Many thanks
Gaz

You need to ask for a 50% hike in your company or tell them you will put down your papers if they don't rectify the signal strength at your office...jokes aside yes this is normal.in my place I have bad 4g signal but excellent 3g so whenever I am at home I enable 3g,although I have WiFi so it's not an issue.sometomes if WiFi is not working then it can easily switch to 3g which does its job,but then won't unnecessarily drain battery.
Also you phone Wil heat up in such cases.
Try switching to 2g or 3g when u r in WiFi and see the change in battery

 

[pkcable]

Some carriers can and will give you a signal booster device to install in weak signal area. I have one from T-Mobile at my office. (it was free expect for a refundable 25 dollar deposit)