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Should you switch off wifi when leaving the house...

The Game 161

The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
31,382
20,643
UK
and when using 3G away from wifi?

I was told it wastes more battery life if you leave wifi on when you are out the house and using 3G/EDGE.
 
The difference will be minimal. When you use the phone it will look for wifi networks every now and then and that's it. When in sleep mode, wifi on makes no difference at all.
 
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Didn't apple specs say they tested with wifi left on and achieved 200hrs standby. Seem to remember someone posting the test.
 
I didn't find a noticeable difference. However I did forget to turn it back on from time to time.
 
The only annoying part of leaving it on is that if your in range of any wifi it will always ask you if you want to connect (even though usually you can't because its secured) prior to pulling data over 3g. So, that is why I turn it off before I leave the house.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A406 Safari/7534.48.3)

No. You can switch that off. Ask to join networks. Turn it off and it won't ask. It will just join known ones you've already joined. Simples. If you want to join one go in and select it manually.
 
i turn mine off because nothing annoys me more than the pop up asking whether to join wifi out of the house.
 
thanks for the tip.

Zxxv said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A406 Safari/7534.48.3)

No. You can switch that off. Ask to join networks. Turn it off and it won't ask. It will just join known ones you've already joined. Simples. If you want to join one go in and select it manually.
Click to expand...
 
cynics said:
I didn't find a noticeable difference. However I did forget to turn it back on from time to time.
Click to expand...

My problem exactly! I didn't have a noticeable improvement in battery life when I left wifi off during the day but I did eat up a lot more data as I constantly forgot to turn it back on when I got home.
 
gadgetmonster said:
The only annoying part of leaving it on is that if your in range of any wifi it will always ask you if you want to connect (even though usually you can't because its secured) prior to pulling data over 3g. So, that is why I turn it off before I leave the house.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I hate that too. Always turn off wifi when I leave the house.
 
Zxxv said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A406 Safari/7534.48.3)

No. You can switch that off. Ask to join networks. Turn it off and it won't ask. It will just join known ones you've already joined. Simples. If you want to join one go in and select it manually.
Click to expand...

Seems like this is the answer to several posters "annoyances".

OP, just leave it on. It's not gonna make a noticeable difference.
 
When connected to wifi my phones battery lasts a lot longer than when my phone is connected to 3G while still having wifi on (just not connected to wifi network)

For example, when my phone is connected to wifi, I usually get ~1 hour of usage by the time my phones battery has hit 90%.

Connected to 3G however, after 1 hour of usage, my phone is usually at 80-83% battery.

I do spend time on twitter/facebook/instagram, but total I would say I spend 15-20 minutes on these apps total, out of the 1 hour usage.
 
I'm really surprised a lot of people don't know they can turn off the notifications when in range of unfamiliar wifi networks.

Settings > wifi > ask to join networks > off.....
 
I leave wifi on all the time. The amount of battery I would save isn't worth the effort of turning it off, and then I'd probably forget to turn it back on when I got home. Then I'd be wasting cellular data when I could be on wifi.
 
maril1111 said:
i always turn wifi off when leaving the house, saves my battery.
Click to expand...

The truth is, that yes, you save a little bit of battery. BUT you forget to turn it back to WiFi when arriving back home, thus staying on 3G a bit longer and you've just used up that savings and maybe even used more battery. Easier to just let it auto connect when you get home. Leave WiFi on, turn off, Ask to join networks, it will auto connect to known networks and not bother you with others.
 
Wifi stays on and ask to join networks off. No problems. Automatically connects to home and work wifi flawlessly.

My annoyance is that when I go to airplane mode at work, I have to manually switch wifi back on.
 
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