Found my battery drain - 5ghz wifi

[gquiring]

I recently took a big hit in battery life. I could not understand what all of sudden caused my battery to drain so quickly. Looking at the battery function in the phone gave me no help. Then I realized I just enabled the 5ghz wifi on my AT&T router. I upgraded my laptop wifi card to get faster speeds and figured might as well get the 6P also on the 5ghz. Well 2 days later back on 2.4ghz band and my battery life is fine now.

 

[B. Diddy]

That's interesting -- I wasn't aware using the 5 GHz band would lead to battery drain. 5 GHz has poorer range than 2.4 GHz, so perhaps your phone was spending more time with poor wi-fi signal, which (like poor cell signal) might contribute to battery drain.

 

[Robisan]

FWIW, I have my 5ghz band named differently from my 2.4ghz band. Android OS sees these as two separate wifi options and automatically switches to which ever is the strongest signal. When its close to the router the 5ghz signal is seen as strongest but at some distance away it gets weaker and 2.4ghz signal seen as comparatively stronger. BTW, our iOS devices don't automatically make the switch - you have to manually go into settings to do it. Score another +1 for Android.

 

[recDNA]

FWIW, I have my 5ghz band named differently from my 2.4ghz band. Android OS sees these as two separate wifi options and automatically switches to which ever is the strongest signal. When its close to the router the 5ghz signal is seen as strongest but at some distance away it gets weaker and 2.4ghz signal seen as comparatively stronger. BTW, our iOS devices don't automatically make the switch - you have to manually go into settings to do it. Score another +1 for Android.

My Android phones have only switched from 5 to 2.4 when 5 is totally out of range. Once on 2.4 they never switched back to 5 on their own. Never. Must be a 6P thing.

 

[Bebusy]

Is it possible to get the phone to 2.4?

 

[GSDer]

Is it possible to get the phone to 2.4?

Not sure what you're getting at. You can certainly connect to 2.4GHz networks. Are you asking if the phone will automatically drop to a 2.4GHz network if an already connected 5GHz network is out of range?

 

[Bebusy]

I think I'm asking is if you can force the phone to pick up only the 2.4 signal?

 

[GSDer]

You can choose only 2.4GHz connections if you so desire; it'll still show 5GHz networks in the list.

 

[gquiring]

I think I'm asking is if you can force the phone to pick up only the 2.4 signal?

On my router the 5ghz band is different SSID and password. So I told my phone to forget that network which deleted the password. Now it does not connect to it. My battery life is much longer on 2.4ghz.

 

[chi11ax]

Thanks for confirming this. I suddenly took a huge hit in my battery life too and suspected my 5Ghz router.

 

[GR3YH4TT3R93]

FWIW, I have my 5ghz band named differently from my 2.4ghz band. Android OS sees these as two separate wifi options and automatically switches to which ever is the strongest signal. When its close to the router the 5ghz signal is seen as strongest but at some distance away it gets weaker and 2.4ghz signal seen as comparatively stronger. BTW, our iOS devices don't automatically make the switch - you have to manually go into settings to do it. Score another +1 for Android.

Idk what iOS devices you have but iOS has had wifi assist, which does basically the same thing but instead of wifi it connects to your cellular data, since iOS 9. And you say that switching weak wifi signals is a score +1 for android but it can actually be (and in your case probably is) extremely detrimental to battery life. If your wifi is aggressively changing from network to network trying to get the best signal you're going to waste more power constantly disconnecting and reconnecting to whichever band has the strongest signal than you would have by staying on the slightly weaker signal to begin with which sounds like what is happening to you. So before you completely disable and write off 5ghz you should see how aggressively your phone is changing networks and adjust the settings to suit your needs.