Does 2G drain the battery more than T-Mobile's "4G?"

4G drains more battery than 2G.
I don't know why, due to me not being a radio technician, but it does.

 

From experience, their 2G drains less battery than their refarmed 3G. Disabling 3G and leaving only 2G on gave my device an extra hour of battery life

 

Throw a spanner in the works here I was on 2g recently. I normally get 3G pretty much everywhere here in the uk. Quite rarely on 2g but recently I was in a low signal 2g area.

My phone chewed through battery like never before. I felt my phone get very hot in my pocket over time.

I exited all apps and still a few mins it was very hot. I hard rebooted it. Still a few mins later it was hot. It was at 10% and lost all of that within around 15mins.

Terrible. I can only attribute this to low 2g signal and the phone boosting power to maintain a signal link to the cell tower. The only other time this has happened was 2g travelling on a train, I put both down to weak signals and power boosting to keep a signal link.

 

The biggest problem is low signals, when the phone will try to find other signals all the time. If there was no 3G signal at all, you should be fine. But if there is a very weak 3G signal, weak enough for the phone to switch to 2G but strong enough for the phone to try using 3G again, that kills the battery.

 

it can vary. if there is equal signal strength, 2G should be more battery happy than 3/4G. however, a solid 3/4G signal will probably be less consuming than a weak 2G signal. i think a huge player in battery vs signal has to do with how hard it is for the phone to keep its constant link to the tower. the harder it has to try, the more juice it will use. kinda like a car going up a mountain road hauling a trailer doing 50mph vs on a flat road doing the same speed.