does android handle wifi intelligently?

S

sabella102

New member
just a quick question, since im home the majority of the time, i usually leave wifi on while im in the house. Although my att 3g is fast here where i leave, wifi is obviously faster and i think blur updates a bit quicker when im on wifi too. anyways, on to my question;

does android handle wifi intelligently/efficiently like other phones?

for example; my iphone 3g and 3gs's battery lasted longer when connected on wifi @ home because the OS would transmit all data via wifi and when the phone was locked and stayed locked for a bit; it would disable wifi and continue transmitting data on its primary 3g radio.

my n97 would only use wifi when i would specify which apps will be using it and when locked it would shut wifi off temporarily till the phone was unlocked.

i ran a few tests on my bold 9700 and i couldnt find a difference in battery drain with wifi on or off.

so to rephrase my question: if im home and gonna be home for a few hours, can i extend my battery life by simply turning on wifi and go about my day? mind you im a moderate to heavy user.

my apologies if i didnt post this in the correct section.

thanks for your replies, hopefully some of you have done a few drain tests on and off wifi.
 
WIFI seems to drain the battery faster, and if your phone is sleep for awhile Android will switch to 3g on its own, then switch back when you wake the phone. But yeah, when I check battery use, WIFI is usually one of the leaders only second to display.
 
thanks for the input

ok, well.... looks like a contradiction. im just gonna go about my day and record my battery consumption. on and off wifi. i have a widget that records battery in a numeric percentage, ill use it and mark my findings every hour. I'll make sure to post my findings.
 
intelligently? I use WeFi to automatically connect to available sites. Is that what you mean? As far as battery issues, I used to keep my Eris plugged in because it was a battery hog. Since I've updated to 2.1 its much less of an issue. I still keep the gps turned off though, unless I really need it. That also drains battery.
 
No I meant; by leaving wifi on and connected to ones network (keeping 3g and wifi on and meebo in the background with about 60mb of ram free), will it waste less battery vs leaving wifi completely off (keeping 3g on and meebo in the background with about 60mb of ram free) and relying on the 3g radio.

i have been logging but my results are all over the place.
 
There's more to consider here too. By far the biggest battery killer is the screen. So, if you using the browser and you use a slower connection then you spend more time with the screen on waiting for your pages to load. As a result, WiFi will use less power than 3G in typical use to get a given job done.

But, it really depends on what you're doing. WiFi uses more power than 3G on relatively idle connections. The reason for this is that WiFi has to constantly transmit to maintain a connection, even if no data is being sent or received. 3G (and Edge and 2G) will only be transmitting when data is being sent.

Android handles this intelligently by default. When the screen is on it will try to use WiFi. If no WiFi that you have access to is in range it will fall back to 3G, then Edge, then 2G, in that order, depending on coverage. When the screen is off (the phone is in standby) it will disconnect from WiFi. This works very well as generally speaking the screen being on means the user is actively using the phone, so WiFi will give the fastest connection and use less power than 3G. When the phone is in standby the data connection is relatively idle, so it disconnects from WiFi to save power.

Of course, you can configure this behaviour. There is an option to stay connected to WiFi even in standby mode. You can tell it to never use 3G. You can turn WiFi on or off. As such, you can force it to use any connection type in any mode. But, the default (WiFi when using the phone, 3G in standby) works very well.
 
I would imagine that this would be nearly impossible to "log" because there are so many other factors and variables you have to try to keep constant throughout your tests.

For example, are you always using the same screen brightness? (the ambient light sensor and auto-adjust will be changing this depending on your setting). Are you running the same applications and background processes? Is your WiFi signal strong, weak, wavering? Is your 3G signal strong, weak, or non-existent?

This would be nearly impossible to track every single element and keep them constant to do accurate testing of WiFi vs 3G. Realistically, use WiFi if you know you are in an area with good, strong WiFi connection or if you are in an area with poor 3G coverage. Otherwise, disable the WiFi radio so it is not scanning for networks and whatnot (even if it does disable when the screen goes into standby you do not want it searching for networks every time you wake your device).
 
those are the variables that are throwing me off. im just gonna go for the win and assume one radio (3G) wastes less power then 2 radions (wifi and 3G)
 
Back
Top