BT, WIFI or mobile data. What use most battery. - Samsung Gear S

Hi
I have a twin-sim and dont really need BT or WIFI connection.
But what use the most power? Bluetooth, wifi or mobile data?

Good question. I would think cellular or WiFi if you can adjust the max data rate.

Mobile data
Wifi
Bt
In that order

3kgt said:
Mobile data
Wifi
Bt
In that order
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So basically BT saves the battery most.
But, if you leave phone on desk all day and do many trips around the building the phone and watch connects and disconnects several times a day.
Dont you think that would use large amounts of battery, both on phone and watch?

I have the same problem. I'm wandering around a lot but my phone stays in one place. I'm getting out of the Bluetooth range which triggers Cellular Auto On. Than, switches on data connection, than sending data to Samsung account to tell that I'm out of the range just to divert all notifications/calls. Sometimes before all that process is done I'm coming back
At this stage I can only guess that it's draining battery a lot.

In theory, power consumption should be cellular > wifi > BT. I've been doing some experimenting to see how battery life is affected when the Gear S is constantly connecting and reconnecting to BT and connecting to wifi. I've set cellular to off for this first experiment since there is a delay before the Gear S tries to connect to cellular after it loses BT or wifi.

Bt, by the end of the night, my watch is around 50%. Wifi by the end of the night from all day use (considering it will be on 3g between times) leaves my watch at around 15-20% by the end of the night.

I have wifi permanently off ( as suggested by another poster wrt to solving some pairing / call forwarding / notifications issues)
I get the BT switching on off all day long going in and out of range but my battery life is still good 54% after 12 hours. I didn't make any calls today but did receive lots of notifications ( mainly BT but also when out of range)
Ive not noticed much of a delay transitioning over - maybe 30 secs before the pedometer kicks in

I leave wifi off also and just leave it on auto. At the end of the night when I go to bed it's always between 30 and 45%

Related

[Q] Forcing 2G when 3G not available

Heya all.
I'd like to know is there some android application that can control my 2G/3G settings based on a rule (something like AutomateIt, which does not do that) so that it stops my phone from trying to connect to 3G network when signal is low or lost?
Let me explain - I go twice a week to a gym which is actually in the basement of a building, and my carrier's network is very weak there, mostly no signal at all.
During those 2hrs period I've noticed that my battery drainage is larger than when I'm in the reach of the network.
Since I know that cell phones tries to log-on to the network using maximum power, and that 3G uses more juice than 2G, I concluded that my phone is trying to reconnect to 3G network when it looses signal instead of doing nothing.
Now, I don't exactly know how phones in general behave when they loose signal alltogether (I think they go from 3G down to 2G and then should go into some passive, listening-only mode, waiting for the beacon from the cell tower), but I guess that in such cases it would be better for me to force the phone to go to 2G (and keep reconnecting/listening on 2G) and later on, when it detects 3G, switch back to it.
Unfortunatelly, AutomateIt does not have radio control and I can't use it like I do at night to turn off sync and data and turn it on in the morning.
Also it does not have a rule related to network signal strength/type/whatever.
I can't use some timer app that would simply turn on/off airplane mode during that period, because I might not go to the gym sometimes, or I might simply be late or leave the gym later, so I'd still have larger battery drainage, even for a short period of time.
Many words, but I hope everybody understands my problem.
Cheers.
OK is it possible that nobody knows the answer to this?
I know that 2g/3g autoswitching should do it's job but watching my power drainage I get the feeling that phone keeps trying to force 3g and that eats the battery.
Sent from my Prime

Unrooted SGS2 report from new user

Just an update.
So I got the SGS2 last nite, about 5pm.
From 5pm to 8pm, I did send 3 short gmails and 2 sms.
Also tap on myATT to check the data usage once.
Receiving one phone call.
From 8pm to 12pm: plugging to charge, fully 100%. Unplug and power OFF @ midnite.
9am in the morning, making a 25' phone call.
10am, check myATT again and it showed I have consumed 11.01MB
Really???? From 5pm yesterday to 10am today with few emails/sms/checking myATT once and it already 11.01 MB???? Heck. Grrrr!!!
After 11:30am, turn ON bluetooth and paired with headset, made another 2' phone call via bluetooth, then turn bluetooth OFF, also turn GPS OFF.
Note: Wifi has never been turned ON.
Since then til now, 4:22pm EST, no call, no browsing, but receiving a lot of gmails (via ATT network since wifi is off), phone showed 6h53m battery life left.
With those activity listed above, I think the battery is weak.
We can indeed turn off both wifi and mobile network and still able to make/receive calls or send/receive sms. This will help save a bit of battery. That's good.
RE: Battery Issues
votinh said:
Just an update.
So I got the SGS2 last nite, about 5pm.
From 5pm to 8pm, I did send 3 short gmails and 2 sms.
Also tap on myATT to check the data usage once.
Receiving one phone call.
From 8pm to 12pm: plugging to charge, fully 100%. Unplug and power OFF @ midnite.
9am in the morning, making a 25' phone call.
10am, check myATT again and it showed I have consumed 11.01MB
Really???? From 5pm yesterday to 10am today with few emails/sms/checking myATT once and it already 11.01 MB???? Heck. Grrrr!!!
After 11:30am, turn ON bluetooth and paired with headset, made another 2' phone call via bluetooth, then turn bluetooth OFF, also turn GPS OFF.
Note: Wifi has never been turned ON.
Since then til now, 4:22pm EST, no call, no browsing, but receiving a lot of gmails (via ATT network since wifi is off), phone showed 6h53m battery life left.
With those activity listed above, I think the battery is weak.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You say you got the phone 5pm last night.
Your phone's battery needs to be cycled for 2-3 days before you can even get close to an accurate summary of battery usage.
Charge the phone until the battery is full, let it discharge with normal usage
3-4 times and after that you will be able to tell how good or how bad your
battery drainage might be on your phone.
Also it's a lot more accurate to test battery drainage if you conduct the
tests BEFORE you install any apps. Just use the phone STOCK for 3-4 days.
He also didn't say how much he was polling for email. Display settings?
And, as the poster above, you need to cycle the battery several times properly.
Nah, no need to cycle battery on most Samsungs, we don't have fuel gauges that need calibration.
A device needs to sit on the shelf for a VERY long time to develop a passivation layer.
Probably just typical "new user playing too much" or "user installed a crappy app like Skype almost immediately".
Although the high data usage is interesting - either Market updates of a new phone (possibly even downloading an OTA update), or you're on UCKH7 and the AP Mobile widget is acting up already.
My highest usage all last year was 400 MB in a month, and that involved quite a bit of tethering my Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Eh, I have an unlimited plan but 400mb isn't all that much. I have no idea how you did any sort of tethering without passing the 1gb mark. I don't stream very often, but will use Pandora or the AT&T Uverse app for college football occasionally. I average about 1gb or so, and have gone up to 4 (although that's far from normal for me).
I work for AT&T and the average user seems to consume about 500 MB in data a month, so if you're on the 200mb plan, you better have WIFI at home / work / school or wherever you spend most of your time.
votinh said:
Just an update.
So I got the SGS2 last nite, about 5pm.
From 5pm to 8pm, I did send 3 short gmails and 2 sms.
Also tap on myATT to check the data usage once.
Receiving one phone call.
From 8pm to 12pm: plugging to charge, fully 100%. Unplug and power OFF @ midnite.
9am in the morning, making a 25' phone call.
10am, check myATT again and it showed I have consumed 11.01MB
Really???? From 5pm yesterday to 10am today with few emails/sms/checking myATT once and it already 11.01 MB???? Heck. Grrrr!!!
After 11:30am, turn ON bluetooth and paired with headset, made another 2' phone call via bluetooth, then turn bluetooth OFF, also turn GPS OFF.
Note: Wifi has never been turned ON.
Since then til now, 4:22pm EST, no call, no browsing, but receiving a lot of gmails (via ATT network since wifi is off), phone showed 6h53m battery life left.
With those activity listed above, I think the battery is weak.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whoops wrong button, anyways, yes there is a bunch of crapware installed on our phones, check out the list of known battery drainers and see if you use any of those. myATT takes a while to update, and its much easier to just type #3282* (data) on your dialer and hit call. Also, wifi would be preferred, as typically it uses less battery (at least thats what I see, especially with any kind of data). Disable automatic updates of alot of things such as apps, weather, stocks and whatnot (removing widgets also helsp), and first time, especially if you linked your facebook, its gonna download and sync all of your contacts and their profile images. 200mb is very restraining if thats what you have...
akira02rex said:
He also didn't say how much he was polling for email. Display settings?
And, as the poster above, you need to cycle the battery several times properly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, I am a totally newbie to smartphone, prior to 5pm on that day, I was still using the antiqued flip phone . However, I am familiar with Android OS a bit since dealing with the B&N NC. I tend to rip the NC apart w/o worrying anything, worst case, restore it confidently; SGS2 is on the other hand, it is a must have device, and I admit that I'm somehow afraid that I will mess it up. That's why still keeping it stock for now. But I eye to use UnNamed ROM along with Entropy512 DD kernel, it is on my list.
Secondly, to answer akira, I have no idea how much I was polling for email, as I said, I left H+ on all the time, so I got every single gmail that sent to me.
Display settings? you meant brightness? or display the Phone Status?
@penguin,
Yes, it's just like new lappy, tons of pre-installed crapware. I was thinking either I manually uninstall them or wait until out of warranty and put the UnNamed or any great custom ROM on it.
You know what, anytime I check myATT on the SGS2, it consumes data, so I found a cheating, sneaky way that checking it using wifi (not using ATT network) or using my NC . The reason I am so focus on it 'cuz I only have 200MB plan, if I use much more than that I will switch plan later, but for now, 200MB plan and using wifi.
You do know you can return to 100% complete stock right? As long as you read and follow directions, there's a miniscule chance of hurting this device, it's very resilient.
smknutson said:
You do know you can return to 100% complete stock right? As long as you read and follow directions, there's a miniscule chance of hurting this device, it's very resilient.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your note, m8.
And honestly no.
Like I said, I just own a smartphone for 2 days, so admittedly I never set a foot (or should I say a finger ) on this forum until now. I am still on the reading/learning curves. Many devices have their different capability, for instance the B&N NC is virtually unbrickable so we (NC users) do have a lot of fun whacking it. If hitting problem, XDA is here for help .
SGS2 is a phone, if we're not confident and if we mess something up, we freak out or panic. hehehehe, at least that's on my mind
The reason I said "no" above because I read some posts and they said only 95% back to original, not 100%. Is it still true?
Anyway, big thank for your confirm.
Alright, so I went online and checked out the data usage.
At around 4:57pm, Internet/Media Net from phone took up 11345KB in one shot.
Don't know what that was
Maybe activating process? Getting H+ to work? Initial setup? Whatever, that's what it was.
The other Internet/Media Net from phone @9:03am and 5:14pm, don't remember what I did? Maybe 1 gmail and 1 sms? Either way, 1 of them took roughly 2MB. Woww.
Adding image
You should really get 2gb on your first month to see how much data you use and not risk paying overages, after that you can decide what to do with how you want to use your phone.
I'm not worry, m8, I'm more like an old fashion guy who not using phone internet much. I am pretty much working and/or wifi accessing all the time
Just try to see how much MB I do use a month since with wifi, I never ever pay attention.
Just another update.
A few days ago, phone was at 33% battery life around 11pm, left H+ on overnite with screen turned off, in the next morning @ 8am, checked, phone was still at 33%.
Last nite, phone was at 87% at 11pm, left wifi on (no H+) overnite with screen turned off, this morning @ 8am, it only has 81% left . Recheck at 9:30am, it's 79%.
I thought wifi consumes less power than 3G, left alone 4G/H+, hmmmm
H+ is only active when transferring data. It's basically using multiple connections of 3g to get faster overall connection, so it was in 3g all night. Also you should try with the battery fully charged and check to make sure your phone was not awake. I know that I drop 1 or 2% overnight with either wifi or cell data.
Thanks, m8
Good to know.
At first, I always think 3G consume more power than wifi. Then reading posts, seems to be 8 out of 10 people claim wifi consume less 'cuz shorter Tx (like wifi at home) distance, final answer from them is "testing yourself" so I did and it got me a surprise that in my case, wifi seems to use more.
Learning every day.
Well every person is different. I live in an area with low signal, so it usually takes a couple of tries to actually get the data, and I have multiple apps checking every 15-30 minutes (but phone still stays in deep sleep). The thing with android is that everyone is different and has different apps that affect battery life.
Update:
Last nite, 01/05, phone was at 87% at 11pm, left wifi on (no H+) overnite with screen turned off, this morning @ 8am, it only has 81% left . Recheck at 9:30am, it's 79%.
Beside 20' talk via bluetooth (after than turn off bluetooth) no other activity in the morning until noon.
Turn on wifi, keep it on until 6:30pm. Did download and install a few apps w/i 15' max, battery at 62%.
At 6:30pm, turn off wifi, turn on H+, turn on gps, turn on bluetooth.
Another 25' talk via bluetooth while driving along with Maps GPS on.
Arrive home, phone has 45% left.
Wowww
With very limited usage, the phone lasts only about a day
Woman, battery drained too fast, grrrrr.
With my normal usage, it probably last 4 hours.
I don't know it is what it is or I actually has a defect battery pack?

[Q] Wifi vs 3g battery life on Atrix 4g

Hi,
my carrier Three UK only has a 3g network hence so switching off 3g is no possible for me. When at home I always connect to my wifi automatically using a tasker profile and my battery can last over the whole weekend with moderate use. However, when I am out or at work without access to wifi my battery can drain more than 60% in a matter of 10 hours, although I use a Tasker profile which only turns on autosync every hour for just 2 minutes. I could turn of background data completely, but to me that would defeat the point of having apps like gtalk, skype etcv on your phone.
What's your experience of battery life on wifi and 3g?
I have my atrix on Orange UK. I get round about the same battery if i have my phone on 3G and most of the time it says H. I can get much more time on wifi but not the whole weekend because i use it more heavily i guess. Although it also depends what rom your using…stock roms are pretty pathetic on battery life due to blur. I was using joker's cm9 and even though i had 3g on whole day my battery lasted 2 days.
urbik78 said:
Hi,
my carrier Three UK only has a 3g network hence so switching off 3g is no possible for me. When at home I always connect to my wifi automatically using a tasker profile and my battery can last over the whole weekend with moderate use. However, when I am out or at work without access to wifi my battery can drain more than 60% in a matter of 10 hours, although I use a Tasker profile which only turns on autosync every hour for just 2 minutes. I could turn of background data completely, but to me that would defeat the point of having apps like gtalk, skype etcv on your phone.
What's your experience of battery life on wifi and 3g?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me, much better battery life on wifi (40-48 hours in weekend on wifi vs 30-36 hours in work days on edge/3G).
When your device is connected to Wi-Fi, then it will consume less battery as it needs less 'juice' to receive data from a Wi-Fi network than a cellular network.
However, if you are on 3G, but have Wi-Fi enabled, then your phone will consume more battery than with Wi-Fi disabled as the phone frequently scans for Wi-Fi networks. The scan time is configurable and stock ROM and CM7 scan every 30 seconds, whereas Neutrino ROM scans every 2 minutes. This means that Neutrino will have slightly better battery with Wi-Fi always enabled as it scans 4x less than normal.
To configure the scan time, you'll have to edit the build.prop.
Regarding your Tasker profile, it's the same thing. Tasker needs to 'detect' when Wi-Fi is on/off and scan for networks in accordance to your personal settings. Therefore it'll still consume battery while it scans and detects.
This brings in the issue of whether it'll be better to use Tasker profiles, or to keep Wi-Fi always enabled and the result will differ for every person depending on the Wi-Fi scan time, or the complications of the Tasker profile.
But putting complications aside, Wi-Fi consumes less battery than 3G, but only when connected.

What is more energy efficient? 3G running constantly, or Wifi running constantly?

As many know, you can set the phone to turn wifi off when the screen is off, this means it will default to using the 3G for data. As someone with unlimited data, either or will do for me.
However, is it actually more energy efficient for it to be running off the wifi rather than 3G? I noticed when wifi is enabled always, the 3G signal is hardly used at all.
wifi should be more efficient even if you leave it on when the screen is off. the difference between long range transmission (cell) and shorter range (wifi) is big.
you can also test it out yourself. play on your phone for a few hours a day, 1 day with wifi off (completely relying on 3g) and the other day with wifi on all day. see how much power you have left.

Cell standby battery usage

I'm experimenting a bit to see if the Omate TS would be a usable replacement for a phone (ie if it would work well during the day to read notifications, use for sports tracking, recieve calls and such).
It started out well - when I took the watch off charging in the morning I activated the phone, WiFi, bluetooth and paired my bt headset, and turned off cell data. I played around with the phone a bit (installed an app, played with that for a few minutes, checked settings and tried some new things there for maybe 10 minutes or so, and so on). I recieved two calls that lasted about 5 minutes each, and checked mails, facebook and such a few times. After lunch the battery showed 78% remaining, which sounded very good.
I decided to take a walk, so I turned off WiFi, enabled cellular data, and turned on GPS. Listened to podcasts through BT headset for the entire walk. One hour walk with RunKeeper, where I checked mail and facebook a few times during the walk.
After returning, the battery was down a lot, to about 25%, ie 50% battery drained in one hour. I checked the battery stats, and it looked like this: (not a link as I can't post links yet due to forum restrictions): imgur.com/WPQJNd4
I'm not surprised about WiFi and BT consumption as I had those enabled and used them quite a lot during the day, but what surprised me is the cell standby adding up to almost 50% of the battery usage, most of which seemed to be drained when I enabled cell data. Is GPS drain included in cell standby as well? Is this to be expected, or what's causing the excessive drain when using cell data connection? Any tips on how to improve this?
My cell coverage during the walk was decent, as I was outdoors and had at least 3-4 bars of reception the entire time.
cell standby is also the highest drain on mine. was on 2g only as well
Sent from my C6903 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Mine usually says that too. Although it still easily lasts me the day with the cell on.
speedyink said:
Mine usually says that too. Although it still easily lasts me the day with the cell on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get about 2 days of battery with emails only, light apps use. 3g and wifi on, no bluetooth connected, zero calls.
8 calls, some messages, BT always on with headset, on 2G GSM, light app usage with brightness on min and i ended on 4th day still with 40%battery left.
sethxp said:
8 calls, some messages, BT always on with headset, on 2G GSM, light app usage with brightness on min and i ended on 4th day still with 40%battery left.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's quite impressive!
I tried again today, took watch of charger when leaving for work. 1 call, 10-15 minutes of "play" (installed an app, changed some settings, re-arranged some icons and such). BT with headset, WiFi and phone enabled all day, mobile data connection off. Recieved quite a few notifications during the day that I checked briefly, but other than that quite idle. When leaving the office at the end of the day I had 52% battery remaining.
Not too bad, but out of that the cell standby and phone idle together consumed half of my battery. Reception is ok, ranging from 2 bars to full (goes a bit up and down). I can't complain about the wifi / bt / screen battery drain, seems the phone standby is the only major battery hog for me.
Cell Standby is a battery hog for me too : about 10% an hour. Cell signal is good. Will try now to disable the mobile data to see if it helps.
P_
sethxp said:
8 calls, some messages, BT always on with headset, on 2G GSM, light app usage with brightness on min and i ended on 4th day still with 40%battery left.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's amazing, what is your setup (hw revision, firmware, settings, etc)?
Disabling cell, wifi, bt, gps, lowest brightness on modified stock (the 2014 testing as a base, ensec, xposed) and I can just make it barely back home on 2nd day with light usage (check the time mostly).
In comparison, my Pebble gets to 30-40% on the 4th day and will die out completely by the 6th day.
Even though the cell standby seems to drain a ton of battery, overall it's acceptable. For normal usage (WiFi on, BT on, paired with headset, phone on, a few widgets and apps that are pulling info from the web, receiving a couple of notifications per hour, checking time/notifications a few times, making a few calls and such) I seem to average about 6-8% per hour. Half of that is for the cell standby, so turning the phone off would probably double my battery life.
I know there are a number of "battery saving apps" out there that modify settings and behavior to save power. Mostly stuff like turn wifi off when screen is off, enabling it once every few minutes to check notifications, and similar. Anyone know if these apps can tune the phone power consumption in any way?
stingray454 said:
Even though the cell standby seems to drain a ton of battery, overall it's acceptable. For normal usage (WiFi on, BT on, paired with headset, phone on, a few widgets and apps that are pulling info from the web, receiving a couple of notifications per hour, checking time/notifications a few times, making a few calls and such) I seem to average about 6-8% per hour. Half of that is for the cell standby, so turning the phone off would probably double my battery life.
I know there are a number of "battery saving apps" out there that modify settings and behavior to save power. Mostly stuff like turn wifi off when screen is off, enabling it once every few minutes to check notifications, and similar. Anyone know if these apps can tune the phone power consumption in any way?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I started running Deep Sleep Battery Saver as I had prior experience with it working well on an SII as a set it and forget application, where other similar programs require much more customisation. keep in mind my omate is not a daily driver, it spends half the week on the charger and the other half on my wrist, and I only use a sim card in their sparingly. as such, I don't have proper data, but I've definitely been able to make it through the day with light usage, occasionally forgetting to recharge until the next day
I think there may be something wrong with either the battery or the circuitry which monitors and reports on the status. I can watch an hour long video with negligable 4% battery loss one day, and another day a similar video draining over 20%.
Certainly with all the radios switched off and very light usage my TS was on 92% well into it's 2nd day...
However soon as you use it... it gets murdered.... lol....
From wednesday till now, few calls, bluetooth on, some texts, very light usage.
sethxp said:
From wednesday till now, few calls, bluetooth on, some texts, very light usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still amazing! Which model hardware do you have? what rom? are you running any additional apps or just what's default? I'd love to replicate your setup on my 1/8 1900
--fg
Truesmart, EU 512-4 2100 working sensors firmware with patch, removed some bloatware, all auto sync off (manual), switched to 2G gsm only, brightness to min, bluetooth always on because crappy mic. Additional apps:facebook, my budget book, hangouts, es file, airdroid, quikpic, teamviewer...

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