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Which drains battery faster? Wifi or LTE?

CharlieBrandt09

CharlieBrandt09

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 28, 2012
408
40
Southern NJ
At home (surprisingly) I get a really decent LTE signal. Sometimes my home wifi acts up with my iPhone.

If the battery drain is similar, I'd probably be better off staying on LTE at home if possible.
 
Here with WiFi only i can go into the 10h-11h usage range,with data on that falls to around 6h-6h30 usage.
 
CharlieBrandt09 said:
At home (surprisingly) I get a really decent LTE signal. Sometimes my home wifi acts up with my iPhone.

If the battery drain is similar, I'd probably be better off staying on LTE at home if possible.
Click to expand...

WIFI drains more.

Mainly because both are active at the same time. So adding WIFI on top of cellular drains more.

When you have connection to a WIFI network, your cellular/LTE network doesn't cease. Phone calls, push notifications, sms all still come through the cellular link.

I would fix the solution. Backups only happen when you have wifi + charger. More data is used for music, app store, etc when on cellular.

New router time?
 
Menel said:
WIFI drains more.

Mainly because both are active at the same time. So adding WIFI on top of cellular drains more.

When you have connection to a WIFI network, your cellular/LTE network doesn't cease. Phone calls, push notifications, sms all still come through the cellular link.

I would fix the solution. Backups only happen when you have wifi + charger. More data is used for music, app store, etc when on cellular.

New router time?
Click to expand...

I dunno. My router is pretty nice. It works perfectly with my laptop, iMac, iPad PS3 and my Marantz Receiver.

Seems to hiccup with only the iPhone.
 
Menel said:
WIFI drains more.

Mainly because both are active at the same time. So adding WIFI on top of cellular drains more.

When you have connection to a WIFI network, your cellular/LTE network doesn't cease. Phone calls, push notifications, sms all still come through the cellular link.
Click to expand...

What? No, none of this is true. You can test it yourself.

Try these:

1) Turn off cellular data on your iPhone. Call it. The call comes through just fine.

2) Then have someone text you while cellular data is off. It comes through too.

3) Then turn on airplane mode and then turn wifi on. See your push notifications still come through.

NONE of those things are solely dependent on the cellular data network, so I don't see why the LTE radio would need to stay active while you're on wifi.
 
Menel said:
WIFI drains more.

Mainly because both are active at the same time. So adding WIFI on top of cellular drains more.

When you have connection to a WIFI network, your cellular/LTE network doesn't cease. Phone calls, push notifications, sms all still come through the cellular link.

I would fix the solution. Backups only happen when you have wifi + charger. More data is used for music, app store, etc when on cellular.

New router time?
Click to expand...

This is really wrong.

You will always get better battery life if the wifi radio is connected. When wifi is not available turn off the wifi radio and that will also help out the battery.
 
Menel said:
WIFI drains more.

Mainly because both are active at the same time. So adding WIFI on top of cellular drains more.

When you have connection to a WIFI network, your cellular/LTE network doesn't cease. Phone calls, push notifications, sms all still come through the cellular link.

I would fix the solution. Backups only happen when you have wifi + charger. More data is used for music, app store, etc when on cellular.

New router time?
Click to expand...
This is completely false. When you're connected to WiFi, calls/texts get routed through 3G and all data is routed through WiFi. Your LTE connection is idle.
 
Menel said:
WIFI drains more.

Mainly because both are active at the same time. So adding WIFI on top of cellular drains more.

When you have connection to a WIFI network, your cellular/LTE network doesn't cease. Phone calls, push notifications, sms all still come through the cellular link.

I would fix the solution. Backups only happen when you have wifi + charger. More data is used for music, app store, etc when on cellular.

New router time?
Click to expand...

No wifi drains less. When a phone has a wifi connection it turns the lte modem to a low power mode that uses a lot less power than it normally would. Trust me you'll get less battery while using lte or 3g.
 
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Menel said:
WIFI drains more.

Mainly because both are active at the same time. So adding WIFI on top of cellular drains more.

When you have connection to a WIFI network, your cellular/LTE network doesn't cease. Phone calls, push notifications, sms all still come through the cellular link.

I would fix the solution. Backups only happen when you have wifi + charger. More data is used for music, app store, etc when on cellular.

New router time?
Click to expand...
yeah, youre wrong...geez
 
It depends on the situation:

- wifi on, in range of AP and connected = less than LTE
- wifi on, not connected to AP - wifi will be looking for a network to connect to constantly, chewing battery
- wifi off, bad LTE signal - LTE will chew lots of battery constantly trying to find a better tower to jump to - if you were on wifi it could do push sync over wifi instead which would take less power


short story is this:

- if you know you are not connected to wifi and will not be in the near future, turn wifi off
- if you know there is no LTE in your area, turn LTE off - otherwise it will constantly be searching for LTE, and searching for a cell uses a lot more power than when it is sitting on one.
- if you know there is wifi available, connect to it and do push sync/browsing/etc over wifi instead - it uses less power.
 
Bluetooth drains the most for me. WiFi will get slightly better battery life than LTE. But, LTE can drain the batter faster when the signal is weak. WiFi does not seem to have any extra drain by leaving it on when not connected to a WiFi network.
 
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It also depends on signal strength you have on LTE. Full bars, better battery life. Poorer signal, worse life.
 
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